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will overclocking my X2 eventually hurt my system?

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blaze24

n00b
Joined
Jul 30, 2005
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Will overclocking my X2 3800+ two hundred more MHz hurt my system and components in the short term or long term? I would like to bump it up 200MHz to make it a 4200+ but I don’t want to hurt my system. I know people do it all the time but this system is a big investment for me and I will probably have it for a while so I don’t want to mess it up. I probably want an overclock without raising the voltage because im sure that will really shorten the life span of my components. I also hear that excess heat from overclocking will shorten lifespan.. will it? I do have good case and CPU cooling. If I overclock my CPU am I overclocking everything else such as my video card, HDD, motherboard chipset even if I use a PCI lock?
 
overclocking is risky, if you cant afford to replace the parts, dont do it...
 
i've heard every 10 degrees difference in temps will cut you cpu's life by half, but that cpu's are usually designed to last about 5 years? or maybe it's 10. usually you can close to, or almost completely, negate the added temps from overclocking by investingin better cooling, but at the very worst you might fry your proc within about 2 years or so? i dont see a 200mhz bump coming anywhere close to these worst-case numbers, however.

i've never heard anything about voltage directly affected the cpu's lifespan, but i assume it also plays a role. i'm interested in the details as well if anyone has any information on this.
 
fluxion said:
i've heard every 10 degrees difference in temps will cut you cpu's life by half, but that cpu's are usually designed to last about 5 years? or maybe it's 10. usually you can close to, or almost completely, negate the added temps from overclocking by investingin better cooling, but at the very worst you might fry your proc within about 2 years or so? i dont see a 200mhz bump coming anywhere close to these worst-case numbers, however.

i've never heard anything about voltage directly affected the cpu's lifespan, but i assume it also plays a role. i'm interested in the details as well if anyone has any information on this.
Click to expand...

IMO thats a big load of bull... if your temperature was a direct correlation between CPU life then how come all the people with phase are the ones with the CPU's dying premature deaths? lol its usually volts that do it to a CPU i think
 
The 200mhz should have almost no effect on your cpu...maybe 2-3c temp wise. I wouldn't be surprised to see you bump up to 2.4ghz (4600+ speeds). You said you have good cpu cooling but didn't mention what hsf you have, but as a general rule for a64's on air, stay under 1.55vcore and under 50c load temp and you'll be fine. Don't worry if you have to go up to 1.44-1.46 vcore for 2.4ghz.
I'm not to sure about the 10c half-life on cpu's. Every chip that I have oc'd has run for 3-4yrs, before I sell/trade/give it away and upgrade again. The max any moderate enthusiast is going to keep a cpu around is 5yrs anyways.....more like 12-18months.
OC'ing does have a "slight" risk, just don't go trying to dump 1.7v into your chip and go nuts. Generally the worst that will happen is your might have to clear your cmos and try again.
 
Thanks for all your help guys. I have a Thermaltake Armor series case with two 120mm fans and two 90mm fans and an XP-120 on the CPU with a Panaflo fan on it. Does clocking my cpu higher mean clocking other components higher as well? I have read that I need to have my HDD’s plugged into the 3rd and 4th SATA port because the first two are unlocked? Is this true? I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium.
 
blaze24 said:
Thanks for all your help guys. I have a Thermaltake Armor series case with two 120mm fans and two 90mm fans and an XP-120 on the CPU with a Panaflo fan on it. Does clocking my cpu higher mean clocking other components higher as well? I have read that I need to have my HDD’s plugged into the 3rd and 4th SATA port because the first two are unlocked? Is this true? I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium.
Click to expand...
No, the only other thing that will/might be oc'd is your memory depending on if you use a ram divider or not. I'm not sure about the sata ports, but I plugged my drive into port 3 just to be safe, and it is indeed locked as long as you boot with htt 201 or higher. My neo2 plat had sata ports 1&2 unlocked, so I just used 3 :D If you boot at stock htt (200) then use clockgen to oc, the pcie bus will oc also, not a good thing.
BTW How do you like that case? I'm deciding between the Armour & Tsunami....but I'm kinda leary about having another 50lb steel tank (like my TT XaserII)
 
fluxion said:
i've heard every 10 degrees difference in temps will cut you cpu's life by half, but that cpu's are usually designed to last about 5 years? or maybe it's 10. usually you can close to, or almost completely, negate the added temps from overclocking by investingin better cooling, but at the very worst you might fry your proc within about 2 years or so? i dont see a 200mhz bump coming anywhere close to these worst-case numbers, however.

i've never heard anything about voltage directly affected the cpu's lifespan, but i assume it also plays a role. i'm interested in the details as well if anyone has any information on this.
Click to expand...


Nah. a serious but stable overclock might reduce the life from 20 years (a theoretical manufacturer limit) to say 15. But who uses it that long? :)

You can get a little more electro-migration but dont worry, you'll be slapping it all on Ebay in less than 3 years time anyway.
 
fluxion said:
i've heard every 10 degrees difference in temps will cut you cpu's life by half, but that cpu's are usually designed to last about 5 years? or maybe it's 10. usually you can close to, or almost completely, negate the added temps from overclocking by investingin better cooling, but at the very worst you might fry your proc within about 2 years or so? i dont see a 200mhz bump coming anywhere close to these worst-case numbers, however.

i've never heard anything about voltage directly affected the cpu's lifespan, but i assume it also plays a role. i'm interested in the details as well if anyone has any information on this.
Click to expand...
yup, cant be true because stock amd heatsink all post higher temps than aftermarket. :p
 
You can almost certainly get 200 more MHz on stock voltage. You shouldn't see any increase in temperatures either. I got mine to 2.45 @ 1.39V, which is still in-spec by AMD's website.
 
Indeed. I got an easy 200+Mhz with standard voltages. Not necessary for what I do, but hey its free and it bumps me to 3800 speeds.
 
As someone mentioned, even with a 400mhz OC (2.4ghz) you'd still probably be running at a cooler temp than not overclocking and using the stock heatsink, so for temps i definately wouldn't worry about it.

As long as you keep the voltage at a reasonable level you certainly shouldn't have any problems. Tech-Report only had to raise their voltage from 1.31 to 1.3375V to get up to 2.4ghz, and i highly doubt you'd need to raise it at all for 2.2ghz. Overclocking your CPU won't overclock anything but the processor and the HT, so you'll be running everything else completely stock. Just make sure you use the correct memory divider so that you don't OC your memory.
 
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