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Cut your computers life in half...

M

MAB

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 22, 2004
Messages
103
Is it true that overclocking could cut your computer's life in half??
 
IMO that's a myth. Yes, it may affect it *some*, but it all boils down to how far you overclock it, how much extra voltage you give it, and how well you cool it. A processor that is overclocked but not over-volted may last just as long as a 'regular' system.
 
I have heard this myth as well....

something about the WC. For example with at normal heatsink when you turn off your PC the heat continues to disapate throught the heatsink. but with WC the heat just heats up the water and sits there on the CPU, thereby shortening the life of the CPU.

I think the uncirculating water would slowly cool just as effectivly as the unfanned heatsink myself but have heard this said many times
 
I had a 486dx4-133 (AMD) running in an SBC (single board computer) at 166Mhz since I got the thing back in the mid '90's. Never a hiccup being overclocked and overvolted all that time, and it's been a great linux router as well. The only reason I'm not running it any longer is because I upgraded my linux router to smoothwall and a dual celeron 500 (yes, oc'd also to 563) <thread here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=801460 >.

That 486 was running in a Nike Size 10.5 shoebox for a long time too...gave it to a friend here to use as a linux router/firewall.

but I agree with the other poster..it all depends on how much you push it with speed, voltage, and cooling. Obviously the cooler you run it, the better off you'll be.
 
Sheldog23 said:
I have heard this myth as well....

something about the WC. For example with at normal heatsink when you turn off your PC the heat continues to disapate throught the heatsink. but with WC the heat just heats up the water and sits there on the CPU, thereby shortening the life of the CPU.

I think the uncirculating water would slowly cool just as effectivly as the unfanned heatsink myself but have heard this said many times
Click to expand...

You, my friend, are mininformed about physics.

The processor does not continue to heat up after it is off, there is no more heat going into the system so there is nothing left but for it to cool down.

Also, having the processor a little warm after you turn it off wont hurt it at all. It actually has far less impact on the processor than having it on because there is no electricity moving to it.

Also, processors are designed to last years. Most overclockers upgrade every year or so, so you really dont have to worry about it crapping out early.

How many people do you know had a processor that just gave up after years of use?
 
Let's see, I have a 1.6 NW that is @ 2400 (50% o/c) that I have had for what now, 3 years they been out or only 2. I had a 350 PII @ 400 that my Sister still uses on her desk. I have a p150 sitting in my closet that was o/c'd to 200 that went through my Quake days then all 3 of my Daughters at college and finally filtered back to my closet. Not to mention the few AMD's that are at friends and other family still. I have never had a cpu fail and I have NEVER ran a cpu at stock. Just cool them well and don't OVERVOLT them is the secret IMHO.
 
the main reason overclocking would cut your computer life in half it because if you fiddle with your pc you are bound to break it. if you can keep it cool and dont overvolt to much you have nothing to worry about.

i have killed a motherboard by taking the heat sink off, the clip scrached a tracing and i have killed a PII by scraching the pcb by taking the intel heat plate.
 
If your CPU will run faster on the same voltage then you shouldn't affect its life by a measureable amount. It's when you start pumping a lot more power through the silicon than its spec that life is curtailed. If you can run a 3 GHz P4 at 3.6 GHz on about the same voltage as it requires to run 3 GHz, go ahead.

In terms of curtailing CPU life the voltage is the most important factor.

Edit: that's all providing you don't let it get too hot...
 
Even if it did, it'd last 5 years at full load assuming no heating issues, etc. But of course i prefer to run my cpu overclocked at a lower temp then stock speed with oem heatsink at a higher temp...
 
Old Abit BP6 with dual celeron 366's @580 each for a crapload of years now..cant even remmeber when I put that thing together. Gave it too a friend who still uses it (one of those weirdos who only use the comp for emails). Most comps will be long obsolete before u have to think about stuff burning out.
 
I don't know about you, but, most of us will upgrade a part before it even has a chance to fail, even if you didn't overclock it
 
Actually, Technically your WC CPU... WILL heat up after the computer has been turned off. Why you might ask? For a brief period after your system is shut down, the water is no longer flowing which won't cool the CPU as well because the water at the CPU now sits and becomes heated up by the heat from the CPU. Thus not cooling the CPU. Once the CPU has cooled off on it's own from dissapating it's heat, the water will then keep the CPU mildly warm for a while after that, acting as a sort of liquid heating. The water heating the CPU is not so much a problem as it's not as hot as the CPU had once been.

Anyways. This will not ruin your processors lifespan.

OCing a processor with improper cooling WILL put your processor to a slow death. But that's why you come here and ask for help so that people can inform you on what is the best cooling for what you are looking to do. :)
 
ShepsCrook said:
Actually, Technically your WC CPU... WILL heat up after the computer has been turned off. Why you might ask? For a brief period after your system is shut down, the water is no longer flowing which won't cool the CPU as well because the water at the CPU now sits and becomes heated up by the heat from the CPU. Thus not cooling the CPU. Once the CPU has cooled off on it's own from dissapating it's heat, the water will then keep the CPU mildly warm for a while after that, acting as a sort of liquid heating. The water heating the CPU is not so much a problem as it's not as hot as the CPU had once been.

Anyways. This will not ruin your processors lifespan.

OCing a processor with improper cooling WILL put your processor to a slow death. But that's why you come here and ask for help so that people can inform you on what is the best cooling for what you are looking to do. :)
Click to expand...

Absolutely not!

The CPU will always be warmer than the Waterblock, the waterblock will always be warmer than the liquid, and the liquid will always be warmer than the radiator. THAT IS HOW HEAT IS TRANSFERRED: it travels from hot to cold: from CPU to radiator.

Therefore, the CPU's heat will still be absorbed by the waterblock and from the waterblock to the water inside. Your CPU temps will never increase when you shut it down. NEVER. That is physics buddy, learn some before posting.

Also, a heatsink will remain warm after the CPU is shut off, but because of the same physics I used to describe what is happening above, the CPU will not become hotter after it is shut down and not producing any more heat. That is like saying a car engine actually heats up after you turn off the car because the water pump isnt working and the fans on the radiator turn off. No more energy being used=no more heat.
 
You didn't read my statement. I said when the computer is shut down and there is no waterflow. Since there is no waterflow to move cool water onto the waterblock to cool the CPU, there's a brief bit that the CPU raises in temperature.

It's just because there is no cooling going on.

No need to become rude about it either "buddy"
 
ShepsCrook said:
You didn't read my statement. I said when the computer is shut down and there is no waterflow. Since there is no waterflow to move cool water onto the waterblock to cool the CPU, there's a brief bit that the CPU raises in temperature.

It's just because there is no cooling going on.

No need to become rude about it either "buddy"
Click to expand...

I've seen watercooling systems on overclocked athlons where the fans were off run for days, and that was with active heating.

I see NO argument for water retaining more heat then a HSF, if anything it continues to disipate more heat then a heatsink would. It will not in any way injur your cpu, nor heat your cpu. The core temp will still cool down faster than it would with no cooling device attatched. There is at worst no change in cooldown time, at best its a bit faster then having no cooling at all. Consider the speed with which water dissipates heat compared to a solid copper or aluminum block and you'll see the point the physics advocates have been making pretty quickly.

And even if overclocking does cut your computer life in half, were you really planning on using the same computer for 50 years? Thats how long most systems last barring physical failure of some kind.
 
It's undeniable that the CPU die is the hottest part in the CPU, HS, water combination. The water is capable of dissipating more heat on one pass than a water-cooling setup will allow, because the limitation is on the transfer of heat from the die to the block of copper.

Anyway, since the CPU die is the hottest element in the system, and the computer is shut off (i.e. no more addition of heat energy to the system) the three elements will slowly reach an equilibrium of temperature and this temperature will slowly go down. The CPU die cannot get any hotter since both the copper block and the water can easily take on more heat than they would when the system is on.
 
just put a ramsink on the waterblock... this an idea :p

anyway from my opinion, WC setup is meant to transfer the HEAT from CPU to radiator.

if the water doesn't flow, heat is not trasfered as water is a heat insulator... only thing happen is that the water in the waterblock will start to boil. have you guys heard of failed water pump caused water boiling in the waterblock? YES, i've heard and seen it.

BUT as soon as the CPU is OFF, there is no current in the CPU, thus no longer producing heat, it just cools down. BUT with HEATSINK, it might cool down quicker as HSF without a fan still a passive heatsink compared to waterblock.

Idle water in the water block will start to heat up as soon as the water pump is stopped. And the CPU will start to cool down also. this process will continue until the CPU, Waterblock and idle water in the block reach an equal temperature.

After this all 3 will start to cool down naturally. At this point the CPU's temp will be lower than it's operating temperature. i don't see this as a factor to shorten a lifespan of the CPU

This is the same theory as a car's engine. when you turn off the engine, the water from the radiator stops, but still you don't see the engine to heat up.

If this worries you, you can install a timer that will allow the water pump to continue to run for few minutes after the Pc is switched off.


^^equilibrium <-- that is the word i'm looking for :D
 
Wouldn't the hot water just flow out of the waterblock and into the highest point in the system anyways? Its definitly not the highest mark on my setup so I'd assume the hot water would rise to a certain extent. It might not even matter but I doubt that water is going to sit in the waterblock. My pump runs 24-7 so I don't really have this problem.
 
My watercooling system keeps running even when the computer is off.
But the real question is how often do you turn your computer off at all?

I only take mine down for hardware updates.
 
MAB said:
Is it true that overclocking could cut your computer's life in half??
Click to expand...

thats why you need to keep it cool... funny how i am running my 2500m @ 11x198 with BELOW recommanded voltages indicated by sissoft sandra... i guess i'm making my beautiful chip last longer than a regular 2500m :D
 
You ever shove a hot poker in the ocean? Does the entire ocean steam?

So the cpu is hot and the water pump turns off.

1. There's still quite a bit of residual movement as the water's inertia, and the intertia of the fan keeps the radiator cool for a few precious seconds. During those seconds heat is dissapated from the block....

2. Any heat left over will still be disspated into the block and subsequently into the water circuit. As the water directly surrounding the water in contact with the block is cooler, thermodynamic law #1 dictates that the heated water will lose heat as it attempts to create thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the circuit...while the water between the block and the rad is pretty warm and won't recieve the energy very readily, the water which could have been taken into the block prior to the shut down, and all through the loop back to the point where water leaves the radiator will be receptive. This water will receive the enegy to the point of Eq, effectivley relieving any heat off the block, which came from the cpu....

even though you turn the power off, thermodynamics are still at work!
 
Another thought...

4 degree (CELCIUS... I dunno why you Yanks use Fahrenheit) water is densest. So the "heated" water from the CPU would still make it's way over the cooler water even if there is no pump.
 
Heat would more readily radiate from the actual block. After there is no more heat being produced, the block isnt really at a high temperature at all.

What the guy a few posts back was suggesting that the CPU actually heats up AFTER there is no more power going to it... which is physically impossible.
 
From what i recall the programs that put the CPU into HLT mode on idle and thus drop ur idle temps are REAL bad because the temp difference between load and HLT mode idle is too great. The little dips on power offs, etc. is no big deal. If it bothers u so much then don't power off! :p I mean who still powers off their pc? Oh wait the nuts with 20 db fans that still bother them... Too much driving a lexus with closed windows... surprised the a/c fan don't bother u! :p
 
Integrated circuits (i.e. microprocessors) usually don't 'die over time' like motors do. Our processors will likely outlive US. If they die it'll be from overheating and burning, a voltage spike, a power surge from lightning or some other msihap, not from 'old age and overclocking'. An Athlon XP can be going at 80C for decades and be just fine. Push it past 100C though and it'll break/fry. The chip doesn't know what its spec is or if it's within it, it will die when something catastrophic happens to it. MOTORS, like in fans, pumps, etc. WILL Die sooner (and within our lifetime) if they're overheating or overvolted. But ICs don't work the same way.

A CPU doesn't exactly spew heat when the machine shuts off. It's not emitting ANY more, as it's not getting power. 'Shutdown Heat' is nothing to worry about. You can leave an H2O cooled rig going with the pump unplugged for a surprising amount of time before things get ugly. Same for turning off the fan on your CPU heatsink.
 
For the record I would just like to say I never meant to Imply that the CPU "heated up" after it was turned off with WC, or got anywhere near the temps of powered on temps.

What I meant to say that it stays hotter longer, as in it takes longer for the heat to disapate. and had heard, and really was just repeating a myth I had heard many times on forums, this might hurt a proc over time.

but I think a concensus has been reached that it doesn't...Yes?




I really didn't think this would turn into such a "heated" debate either. :D
 
Sheldog23 said:
For the record I would just like to say I never meant to Imply that the CPU "heated up" after it was turned off with WC, or got anywhere near the temps of powered on temps.
Click to expand...



I think we can dead this thread. Regadless of what meant to say, it seems that we've put his fears about the prospect of having his cpu die an early death via watercooling to rest.
 
I gave my Wife's mother my old Pentium 2 300 that I overcloced to 450 and it's still running great. Although she only uses it to check email and surf, it's still running fine. And what is that... 5, 6 years old?
 
MAB said:
Is it true that overclocking could cut your computer's life in half??
Click to expand...

Not in half but will take some life off it ..most Chip makers want there products to last a LONG time so unless you intend to use that CPU or video card for over 3-4+ years don't even sweat it.. of course overclocking can lead to worse things than wear and tear .. it can downright kill your CPU ..motherboard ..hard drive ..video card...sound card ..pretty much anything inside and attached can be destoryed heh but more often then not it won't make a difference.
 
I have an Athlon XP 2000+ that cools off very quickly when I set the FSB to 100 mhz (200 mhz DDR) instead of the default 133 mhz FSB. I do that if case temps are very warm so everything can cool off before I shut it down. I agree with 'killernoodle', in a watercooling setup, the CPU temps won't rise because circulation has been cut off. Just look at the water temps, the water temps are far lower than a heatsinks temps will ever be. Water absorbs heat better than air. Therefore, the water temps will not rise hardly at all becaue once the power has been shut off to the CPU it cools very quickly. Just look at how small it is, there isn't much surface are on the CPU core to retain heat. If they made the CPU die surface from steel, then it would remain warmer longer because steel doesn't conduct heat nearly as well as aluminum, and copper. Once the power has been cut off from CPU, it cools very quickly. And even if it did warm up a little after shut down, it's irrelevant because of how cool it's running with water cooling than if it were air cooled. The only time heat generating things heat up after shut down is when they are insulated.

Take my 93 Ford Taurus, it runs hot because the elec fan kicks in when the engine temp gauge gets to the "a" in the word "normal" centered in the temp gauge. That's a little to hot for my liking, but I'm not going to spend money to get lower temps in my car, such as a lower temp thermostat, or hardwiring the fan to run all the time. Anyway, the engine compartment is somewhat insulated, and in my case, the engine does get warmer after I shut it off because of the insulation under the hood. Cars don't have something to wick the heat way like CPU's do. Let's do some ratios. Suppose my car engine represented the CPU die, all I'd say is that would be one massive heatsink sitting on the front of my car!! That is if the heat gererated form the engine could be transfered to the heatsink, being that engines don't have a nice flat surface to mount a heatsink to.

My point is, the heatsinks and waterblocks are so massive in relation to the size of the device generating the heat, that the CPU has no time to heat up after shut down because of the high thermal conductivity of the aluminum and copper heatsinks we strap on. The core has no mass to retain an great amounts of heat, it gets sucked out so fast by the heatsink that the core doesn't have much of a chance to heat up after shutdown. Sorry of I've gotten windy, and have repeated myself. People who don't use their brains much, perhaps I should say, don't use common sense much should have paid more attention in school, rather than what they were going to do with their girlfriend that night.
 
Aurgh, use linebreaks man!

Water continues dissipating heat, just as well or better then a HSF.

Consensus: no harm, no foul.
 
Those old CPU's barely produced any heat, hence the passive cooling, or in the case of our 486DX 25 mhz dinosaur here at home, no heatsink at all. I stated this in another post, elctronic devices are more prone to failure the hotter they get. The expansion and contraction of the traces, and transistors as a CPU goes from room temperature to over a 100 degrees repeatedly will reduce it's overall life to less than those old pentium 200 that could be run on passive cooling only. Expansion form heat, and contraction from cold temperatures stresses electronic components, so they do wear out. Neither Intel, nor AMD could have forseen the radical and exotic cooling solutions we have today to try and keep CPU's cool back in the mid nineties when passive cooling was all that was needed. Neither can we see the radical cooling solutions that will be needed 5 years form now to keep our CPU's from going up in smoke. Today's top of the line coolers will be the OEM coolers tomorrow. Watercooling will become the norm unless the engineers stock trying to get super high clock speeds ::cough:: Intel ::cough:: and resort to making their CPU's more efficient as AMD has. Doesn't it strike you odd that an AMD CPU clocked 1 ghz slower than an Intel CPU can keep up with it, and even surpase it? The CPU's today run hotter setting idle than the CPU's of several years ago did under load. As the clock speed increases, the heat generated, and the greater temps we will see in future processors will do nothing but shorten their overall lifespan. I'm dying to know how they intend to keep the upcoming dual core CPU's cool. Processor efficiency is a far greater goal to strive for than the Intel way of brute force via high clock speeds. Although they (Intel) seem to have admitted (not verbally, nor officially anyway) that AMD has done better at lower clock speeds than they at their super high clock speeds. Perhaps people were starting to figure out that an equivalent clocked Intel CPU got clobbered by an AMD CPU. Maybe that's why they resorted to using model numbers instead of clock speed numbers, it was to embarrasing to admit they couldn't compete on a clock for clock basis with the competition... :D That's just specualtion on my part.
 
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