How Long do CPUs Last?

[Smartazz]

How long can we expect today's overclocked processors to last at stock voltage with good cooling? Obviously well longer than their usefulness, but has anybody used CPUs for many years even when they were very outdated?

 

[mrSHEiK124]

How long can we expect today's overclocked processors to last at stock voltage with good cooling? Obviously well longer than their usefulness, but has anybody used CPUs for many years even when they were very outdated?

Overclocked and overvolted Athlon XP - still running
Overclocked and overvolted Athlon 64 - still running
Overclocked and overvolted Athlon 64 X2 - still running
Overclocked and overvolted Core 2 Quad - still running. Without needing a single mV bump in voltage since day one.

And you're asking about at STOCK VOLTAGE? :awe: I have a Pentium MMX that still works. Most of the other components in that thing died. But the CPU is still as good as day one.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

As of now, I am typing this post on a 2001 Dell Latitude c600 with Pentium 3 850mhz.

So I would suspect that cpu's last as long as they will last. That is until a voltage spike could destroy some interconnects, rendering cpu error prone.

 

[gmaster456]

CPU's are one of the longest lasting, if not the longest lasting component of a system.

 

[thescreensavers]

^ this

 

[Smartazz]

Oh, so I guess things like motherboards will die far sooner anyway?

 

[BladeVenom]

I think they are suppose to average about 10 years.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Oh, so I guess things like motherboards will die far sooner anyway?

Even motherboards refuse to die, unless they had those crappy capacitors.

Hard drives. Fans. Anything with moving parts is the first to go. Things like memory and processors only really die from too much voltage. Causes degradation.

 

[MrTransistorm]

My Northwood P4 2.4C has been running at 3GHz for 8 years. For the last 3.5 years it's been running 24/7. IIRC the Vcore is at 1.5375V. Not stock, but not high either.

Oh, so I guess things like motherboards will die far sooner anyway?

Not really. PSUs and hard drives are much more likely to fail with time. The P4 system I mentioned above has suffered the slow death of three system drives, one PSU, one CPU fan, and one optical drive.

 

[superccs]

had a 700mhz athlon K7 (Slot A) that just stop getting used as a 4th generation hand me down about 2 years ago. Thats like way too long

 

[blackened23]

celeron 300a overclocked to 450 dead after 2 years -- computer remained on and oc'ed 24/7

core i7-870 overclocked to 3.9ghz and change - dead in 1 year - computer remained on 24/7 with 1.4vcore


AMD 486DX4-100 overclocked to 120, built by my dad

still works, dos 6.22 yeah boy

luckily I got RMA warranty replacements for all cpu's that died from overclocking, gotta love abusing the system.

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[VirtualLarry]

I don't think I've ever kept a CPU long enough for it to die on me.

I did run my E2140 CPUs @ 1.425v BIOS, 1.4v CPU-Z, @ 3.2 for nearly 2-3 years though, and they never hiccuped. Edit: 85C for most of that time too!

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

With decent temps and an OC on stock voltage, probably more than twenty years. On a mild over-volt with a high OC (think Sandy Bridge at 4.5GHz at 1.32V), around 5 years before you need to raise voltage slightly to keep the OC and more than 10 years before it dies.

 

[tweakboy]

How long can we expect today's overclocked processors to last at stock voltage with good cooling? Obviously well longer than their usefulness, but has anybody used CPUs for many years even when they were very outdated?

Dude honestly they last a life time. But you never get to find out since you keep upgrading and putting it on hiatus ....

They will liaterlly last decades and decades.. The reason Im talkin condifent is long time ago I was reading P4 CPU and Athlon II and how they can endure and endure and keep enduring. Mechanical Drives dont die easy either unless you keep bumping into your case. I know of 11 years old and tikin a Athlon XP kept @ 60c idle and 90's c load lol

 

[tweakboy]

I had a WDC still tikin after 60k hours usage

so even mechanical drives go forever. How long they live depends on what they endured heat wise throughout its lifetime....

 

[john3850]

My first P-75 from 1993 will still run.
Most pc just get to slow to use but rarely die.

 

[tweakboy]

We have a old old 30 inch panasonic Supder duper 480p res LOL from 1988 still going same thing, its a component which is power driven. . or is it less then that lol, thx

 

[tweakboy]

My first P-75 from 1993 will still run.
Most pc just get to slow to use but rarely die.

we can fix that by doing maintanence on the PC right ? like reg cleaner and reg defrag and hard drive defrag etc...

I can understand a Athlon XP or P4 or Pentium D be slow but not todays machine, and now with SSD u can have bunch of apps load at startup in a instant!!!!!!!!!

 

[stahlhart]

Have a 233MHz MMX and a 4.2Gb Deskstar 5 that are both alive and still kicking like brand new -- and were, in 1998. Tweakboy is right; it's mainly about their environment (and also power cycling, in the case of semiconductors).

 

[IGemini]

Oldest CPU I know still chugging at stock is my old Pentium 4 530 in a Dell serving as my parents computer, got that in summer 2004.

The only CPU I know that actually died was my old E6600 (the original Conroe, not the Pentium) I got in August 2006. It spent the majority of its life OCed to 3GHz @ 1.38v, spent a lot of time gaming and doing SETI and Rosetta crunching, and later as a MythTV DVR and Minecraft server. Was never pushed thermally. It went this April when it stopped recognizing 23 as a prime number. These are all accounting that my computers are on >95%.

 

[gevorg]

Last time I checked, my overclocked and overvolted AMD Thunderbird is still running, its been over 10 years now.

 

[Smartazz]

I'm surprised how long some of you got CPUs to last. My oldest one that's still running is a Pentium 4 530J. I've had a hard drive die, one power supply, one video card and a stick of RAM die on me in the past 6 years. Perhaps I'm a little unlucky there?

 

[Heinrich]

I lost a motherboard and RAM when I powered on a motherboard with the DRAM partially seated. There was a puff of black smoke and everything.

CPU survived, it as an Athlon XP 3200, and sitll runs in my dad's second computer.

 

[86waterpumper]

My parents donated my first computer I bought when I moved out on my own back in the 90s to their church I don't think they use it much anymore but it still runs. It's a Cyrix 166 or 200 can't remember which... It's been o/c it's whole life. Here at work, we had a old 486 dx2 @ 66mhz, that we ran up until 2000 or 2001. That's not that impressive timewise, except the last two or three years of it's life it ran bare chip without a heatsink or fan of any type...it got scalding hot but never did stop working we just finally got bored with tinkering with it and tossed it.

 

[nemesismk2]

stock cpus last a very long time and I have never had a stock cpu fail. Now an overclocked cpu is a different story lol

the longest I have owned a motherboard was the asrock 939 dual sata2 which lasted me over 6 years because it was so upgradeable.