Overclocking life expectancy

[pswanberg1]

So I've been an enthusiast about hardware and such since I was about 12 yrs old but I never bothered to go the over clocking route due to money issues. If I was though, I would like to know the life expectancy of a q6600 air cooled with a good HS to around 3 GHz.

I upgrade fairly often so if it somewhere around 3 years plus that would be great. Can anyone give a ballpark estimate?

 

[d50man]

In an overclocked system the weakest link can bring the box down always balance your build
and it will last.
Now about that cpu it won't degrade if you keep temps and voltages near stock values.
But you have to remember that the ambient room temps can kill faster than overvolting.
A good 120mm fan based air cooler will get you that OC dependably with good temps.

 

[pswanberg1]

My build consists of pretty good quality stuff.

Q6000 OC'ing to 3Ghz with zalman CPNS9700 (got it for free)
Gigabyte 8800 GT OC w/zalman cooler
2 gig Corsair XMS2 800
Abit ip35-pro
Corsair 550VX

I'm a comp engr student and they don't teach you stuff like this in school, at least in terms of life span of chips. I understand temps among other things are very important to help decrease the chance of hot current injection? (I think thats right) I just wanted a sort of ballpark estimate of how long it will last,I don't want to have to replace this thing in a year if I decided to leave it at 3ghz.

 

[vtx_]

So I've been an enthusiast about hardware and such since I was about 12 yrs old but I never bothered to go the over clocking route due to money issues. If I was though, I would like to know the life expectancy of a q6600 air cooled with a good HS to around 3 GHz.

I upgrade fairly often so if it somewhere around 3 years plus that would be great. Can anyone give a ballpark estimate?

Money issues are even the more reason to overclock. You get a lot more for your money by overclocking. You shouldn't have any problems with hardware failing due to overclocking on air. As long as you keep your temps at a reasonable level your hardware will be fine.

I think a chip normally has a life span of around 10 years IIRC, so with overclocking maybe like 7 years? People have run overclocked systems for over 5 years pretty much 24/7 with no problems though. So really 3 years isn't asking much.

I personally have never killed a chip from overclocking, one motherboard though (Crappy FIC mobo that wasn't intended for overclocking the slightest bit.)

My build consists of pretty good quality stuff.

Q6000 OC'ing to 3Ghz with zalman CPNS9700 (got it for free)
Gigabyte 8800 GT OC w/zalman cooler
2 gig Corsair XMS2 800
Abit ip35-pro
Corsair 550VX

I'm a comp engr student and they don't teach you stuff like this in school, at least in terms of life span of chips. I understand temps among other things are very important to help decrease the chance of hot current injection? (I think thats right) I just wanted a sort of ballpark estimate of how long it will last,I don't want to have to replace this thing in a year if I decided to leave it at 3ghz.

That looks like a solid build, just don't overlook a good case with good airflow.

 

[Mithent]

Although overclocking may shorten components' lifespans, it's unlikely that it would cause things to die within their usable lifetime provided they're running sufficiently cool and stable.

 

[Deton]

In my opion, the system will be obsolete before it die. Alter 3yrs you're start thinking of upgrading.
The main thing here is control the heat, if you can keep the CPU temp under 45c idle and 60c load then I consider it's safe.

 

[Wshmaster0]

A chip usually outlasts the lifetime of the board itself. People sometimes choose boards that aren't built for overclocking and end up frying the board before they do the chip.

Of course there are other culprits such as power supply and/or cpu cooling issues.

To get the most out of your chip, I would say keep the temperatures below 45c on idle and below 60c on load. This can easily be done on a fairly good CPU cooling such as the 9700.

Unlike a dual core, a quad core has much higher temperatures off the bat so it will be harder to achieve super high OC's with air. With stock air cooling you should be able to OC comfortably at around 3.0-3.2 ghz on air. There are people here who will attest to a 3.6+ghz oc on air but it is either 1) large quantities of fans 2)not a 24 hour stable prime

 

[BillParrish]

I agree with the above.

If I was though, I would like to know the life expectancy of a q6600 air cooled with a good HS to around 3 GHz.

Being absolutley serious, if you keep the Vcore reasonable and the cooling working well the cpu will outlive you baring any lightening hits etc. Board and power supply not so much, its the capacitors mainly. I have a 5+ year old NF7-s with a Barton mobile chip OCed to an inch of its life purring next to me. Water cooled with excellent airflow in the case (keeps board components cool) makes sure that inch is never used up. I am worried about the caps on the board, not the cpu.

 

[pswanberg1]

thanks for all the replies and info, pretty much was the response I was hoping for.

 

[Clockz]

I don't know if I have ever had a CPU die but I tend to keep the voltage close to stock and use good cooling. I have boxes of old boards that still work from 20+ years ago (ever overclock an 8088 or Z80? ). I have had more than a few motherboards die due to bad capacitors though.

I have a Pentium 166 with 35% OC to 225 Mhz that has been running off and on for well over 11 years. Stock voltage and heatsink. I also have a Celeron 300A with 50% OC to 450 Mhz that is 10 years old or so. One of the best overclockers ever. Also stock voltage and heatsink. I still use these machines to test the efficiency of my software since if it runs well on them it will run incredible on regular hardware.