Life expectancy of an Overclocked CPU

[EmperorRob]

Hey I've heard that overclocking your CPU greatly shortens its life. Anyone have any experience or info on this?

 

[BurntKooshie]

It does. How much, depends on a lot of things, including operating temperature, voltage, frequency, length of time it is overclocked, etc.

Plus, chips only have a certain life expectancy anyway....

But, short answer, overclocking shortens the life....if it didn't, why wouldn't every manufacturer push the absolute limit?

 

[shiznut123]

If you have good cooling, it will last way longer. By the time it dies, you can get a new cheaper processor.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Remember that 3 years ago, the P3 just came out, and the Athlon did not come out until August. An o/c CPU should last 3~5 years, by which time it is time to upgrade anyway. (Yes, you can get away with using a CPU for longer if all you do is word processing, spreadsheets, and surfing. But then why are you o/c?)

o/c in the past was done because buying a new/faster CPU was prohibitive due to the price. Intel essentially had a monopoly in terms of pricing. If you could buy a P3 500E ($200) and o/c to a 733 ($400), then you just saved yourself a ton of money.

The "problem" with o/c today is that due to the AMD/Intel price war, chips are relatively inexpensive. A 700 MHz Duron (Celeron) goes for ~$50 (~$80 for C2) shipped to your door. That is enough power for most people. For a gamer, THG has shown that a graphics card is the bottleneck in most cases. Thus an 800 MHz CPU will suffice for gamers. From a cost/benefit point of view, o/c does not make much sense.

But on the flip side, if you do o/c and burn up a CPU, then at least it is cheap to replace it.

That being said, I do o/c my 700E to 1.08 GHz even though it does not gain me much, and not everyone does o/c from a cost/benifit point of view.

 

[Mavo]

Can the same be said about video cards, sound cards, etc. when overclocking via the FSB?

 

[EmperorRob]

Well I'm definitely going 1Ghz Thunderbird building the next system. My decision was whether to go with a stock 266 1Ghz Thunderbird or get a 200fsb 800/850mhz Thunderbird and o/c it.

I've been using my P2 350mhz for 4 years and it still keeps pace with my games and compilers and networking progs. If I'm going to invest the extra cash into DDR I don't want my system's cpu to burn out it a couple years if you know what I mean, Vern.

 

[rogue1979]

In the case of the Duron and Thunderbird, I'm not so sure overclocking shortens the life at all. All the cores are rated for the AMD spec of 1.85v, which is pretty much what everybody running a high overclock is using anyway. Plus the fact that they are sticking a massive heatsink on it to keep the temps from the low 40's down into the 30's. A stock heatsink at stock speed will produce average temps in the low 50's. I've read that the average life expectancy of a cpu is 30000- 40000 hours. If you run your cpu 12 hours a day that's about 7 to 9 years. Cut that in half and you will still get 3.5 to 4.5 years. I think any overclock with lower temps than stock could not possibly wear the cpu out in half the time, so no matter what we are safe past the point of the next upgrade.

 

[EmperorRob]

Ok then. If I went with a 850 T-bird @200bus (266 only avail on 1Ghz?) then would there be any advantage to buying 2100 DDR RAM over 1600 DDR RAM? I'm new to overclocking so go easy on me.

 

[SleepyGuy]

my celery 300A@463 is still clunking along at 2.3 volts since the day i got it. crappy cooling and everything. hmmm... i think i've had it for around 3 years...

 

[DarkMajiq]

EmperorRob: Going with PC2100 will give you a performance boost over PC1600, since I believe the AMD760 makes you run memory and FSB sychronously, you'd be limited to 100MHz (200MHz DDR) with PC1600. I could be wrong on this though. My suggestion though is to go with a KT133A-based motherboard and some good CAS2 PC133, it's cheaper and there's barely any performance difference from the 760 with PC2100 DDR.

 

[EmperorRob]

Yes DarkMajiq, you're right about the 760 chipset. I remember reading that now. And yes I am comparing the 2 options right now, either DDR or PC133.

If it turns out that I can get DDR for not much more $$$ than that's the way I'll go. I always want to leave myself open for future upgrades and if DDR starts to take off, I'd like to be in prime position to get more of it.

 

[SuperCyrix]

If you overclock your CPU at close to default voltage, I don't think you'll shorten it's lifespan. I'm fairly sure ncreasing the frequency by itself will not hurt the cpu.

 

[Planktune]

I have a 1.2 ghz 266 tbird on a iwill KA266r board the ram is crucial 1600ddr running at 2100 speed no problem, all on default voltages. got a real good chip cooler though.
high voltages and temps is what kills the chips not multiplier or fequncy bus

 

[EmperorRob]

Could you have run your DDR 1600 @ 2100 if your T-Bird was 200fsb?

 

[MGMorden]

As SuperCyrix said, unless you increase the voltage, you don't shorten the lifespan at all. Keep in mind that most of these chips (like duron and celeron) could have been sold as much faster speeds right from the factory if the manufacturer wanted. The problem is that they have to have "slow" chips to sell and they don't make a lot of them that are limited to that slow speed. The solution they use is to simply mark chips that could have gone well over their rated speed as a slow chip. That's why some people can overclock some Duron 600's further than they can some 700's. That 600 could have easily been rated a 700 (or higher) by AMD and sold as such, but they gotta have 600's to sell so they marked some of that chips as such.

 

[kylebisme]

yes EmperorRob, you can. you just may have to unlock the mutipler and turn it down a bit if your cpu cannot take a 33% speed increace though.