Has anyone ever killed a CPU by Overclocking it?

[LarryJoe]

Not to post another thread on voltage, but there have been so many folks worried about killing their P4 by supplying too much juice.

I wondered how many threads over the years I have read from folks who have killed their CPU's? I can not recall many, if any. So why would increasing voltage mysteriously start making these P4's explode?

I would be interested to hear some stories of overclocking casualities.

 

[Anubis]

yes CPUs have died with Ocing. i have killed 2

 

[Assimilator1]

What's the details TheEvil1 ?

Btw I've killed an old Cyrix CPU by overclocking it ,it's default speed was 120MHz ,I overclocked it to 133MHz & 2days latter it was dead!.
Those POS were run to the limit anyway so I wasn't entirely suprised, GR2BR

Other than that,no probs yet ,I have a Cel 366@550 @ 2.1v which will be 3yrs old in August ,its still runs fine & it has been running SETI 24/7 for most of that time(100% CPU load).I also have a Cel 300A @ 475 @ 2.1v which is 3yrs old ,still runs fine for my sons PC

When CPU's die from overclocking it's usually because they have been pushed to the raw edge with high voltages or the cooling has been very poor ,the exception is old Cyrix CPU's

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've never killed a CPU from overclocking but I got a CPU from someone with the most horribly bent pins! Now that's a pain in the a$$...

 

[JeffG]

I lost a Duron 750, can't remember the exact change I made, but it was trivial, no voltage adjustment or anything like that.

 

[Acanthus]

killed 2cpus with very advanced ocing, involved 2v+ on Tbird 1400s unlocked, they ran real fast til the roasted ;-)

 

[RadioactiveMagpies]

I had an old p100 oc to p133, p200 to p250, 5X celeron 300 to 450, celeron 566 to 850, xp1700(1466mhz) to 1650mhz, with no deaths.
Not an extreme overclocker, but i think if the motherboard + powersupply is good and stable, it should protect the cpu from most harm caused by voltage increases.

 

[geforceX]

The only scenario that I can think of when a CPU died under O/c condition is that when the fan isn't pluged.....
or you have too much voltage, and not enough cooling.... which it fried the CPU....

 

[lookin4dlz]

I killed an AMD 266MHz by "overclocking" it to its stated fsb speed...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

<< I killed an AMD 266MHz by "overclocking" it to its stated fsb speed... >>

 

[Assimilator1]

What happened? fan died?

 

[lookin4dlz]

Yes, it was a slow horrible death. Just had more & more problems with my computer, which drove me crazy until I figured out that it was the processor going, going, gone...

 

[lookin4dlz]

No, the fan and everything else was ok (reincarnated & used to oc celeron). The processor just slowly got worse & worse. Happened right in the middle of writing my thesis. At the time just a horrible experience! I spent entire weekends trying to get the computer to run reliably. Even took Microsoft tech help's advice & upgraded to Win 98, lol. Oh well, the celeron's been running fine oc'd ever since. But it's time to make that next oc upgrade. Just waiting a month or so until the memory path (RDRAM vs DDR) gets more clear to me.

 

[techietam]

<< Btw I've killed an old Cyrix CPU by overclocking it ,it's default speed was 120MHz >>


It was 150+ wasn't it? those and 166+..... Oh boy... If I had one of those chips
and a hammer right now it wouldn't die because of natural cause or O/Cing...

Those chips used to O/C my nerves so badly at work... Oh well.. I guess you say:
"processor died due to overclocking", if I had items listed above

 

[Assimilator1]

LOL ,yeah it was a P150+ ,I had forgotten its model name ,what probs did those POS give you?

 

[Zap]

I've killed a 486SX25 CPU. Was overclocking it to 33, then 40. Left it running at 33 for a while, then machine locked. CPU was dead. It was just an old one we had sitting around that we were overclocking because we were bored.

A friend of mine has killed a Duron 800 and an Athlon 1.2 (AXIA) kinda from overclocking. The Duron got killed when he physically broke the core while messing with the HSF. The Athlon died after he got AS all over the top. So, they died from overclocking, but not from the actual overclock itself.

 

[Plester]

1gig AXIA at 1.6 w/ 2.15vcore - it was water-cooled and stable as a rock for months then one day - poof - it gave up.

 

[Assimilator1]

Not surprising at that voltage!