Worried a lil

[oldfordfreak]

I have always been a big chicken when it comes to overclocking. I don't want a big increase I just want to learn how so I can start to learn to help others do it.

I have watched Tiny Tom Logan's overclocking video quite a bit. I get worried when he gets to the last few minutes of the video and starts talking about how any overclock is going to have problems a few months later. Until now I had never thought about this being something that I would have to maintain every few months. I just wanted to over clock it a to like 4.2ghz and forget about it lol. So now I am worried about this whole overclocking thing. Will I constantly have to check its stability even if I modestly overclock?

So far I just have a modified HAF 912 with fans on both sides of the Rad, an 128gb OCZ Vector SSD and 1tb Segate 64mb cache HDD, 850w Seasonic and a H100i. I plan on getting a 3770k, 8gb 1866 ram, and either Asrock or MSI motherboard once I sell my old car. I will have to wait for the video card till the fall... My plan was to build the newer computer I needed for teaching in the summer, and once I get paid from my future job I will buy a gpu in the fall.

I love building computers, got lured away from PC gaming by Halo 3 back in the day, and now I am going to build my super gaming machine and also so I can do some video editing for a PoliSci YouTube channel as I get more money for software.

Thanks for listening to me ramble... just need someone to keep me from chickening out on the overclock lol. :huh:

 

[alpenwasser]

Hi there,

I get worried when he gets to the last few minutes of the video and starts talking about how any overclock is going to have problems a few months later.

The trouble about overclocking is not the actual overclock itself (meaning the increase in clock frequency), but the increased voltages you will have to run through your chip to get a decent overclock.
Any chip ages with time, that's just the way it is. On stock voltages and with a decent cooler, this degradation is usually so slow that you can easily run your chip for several years without noticing this.
I had an AMD chip that ran for four years more or less 24/7 on stock settings and at some point it just gave out (I checked, it really was the CPU that was defective).
However, if you start increasing the voltages for your CPU, the speed at which the chip degrades increases. At some point this degradation might result in you having to increase the voltage in order to be able to run the same overclock without stability issues. Naturally, this increases the speed of degradation further and so on and so forth.
Form personal experience I can say that this effect is not very pronounced if you don't run unreasonably high voltages through your chip on your first overclock.

So now I am worried about this whole overclocking thing. Will I constantly have to check its stability even if I modestly overclock?

Well that depends on what you do. If you run critical software on it that cannot have any errors in its calculations (and that's what a CPU does after all, calculate things) then I would recommend doing some testing (Prime95) every few months or so to see if the CPU still produces good results. If it does not, you will either have to increase voltages to keep the overclock, or reduce the overclock. Since this is something you should do anyway the first time you overclock, it's not really that much effort.

But for most cases as long as the system runs stable you don't really have to do any serious maintenance (admittedly, TTL along with many other people know a lot more about this than I do or might have different priorities leading to different decisions, but this has worked well for me so far). If you start getting instability, it's time to start adjusting your voltages and clock frequencies again.

Just always make sure you have adequate cooling and that the temperatures don't skyrocket (higher temperatures => faster degradation)

So: Don't be a chicken :lol:

 

[oldfordfreak]

Thanks!! Is the Intel overclocker's warranty a good idea to buy? Thanks for telling me about the double posts lol!

 

[alpenwasser]

I'd say depends on how much that warranty costs.

If you don't run insane voltages through your chip (which depends on your type of CPU of course) and provide good cooling, it's not much (but still a bit) more likely to die on you than a chip running @ stock.

Whether or not that greater-than-zero-but-not-insanely-high risk of killing your overclocked CPU with non-stock-but-still-sane voltages is worrying enough for you to buy that warranty only you can decide.

PS: You can edit your posts, no need for doubling up

 

[seumasbeathan]

I wouldn't bother with it if I was you, unless you are running 1.45+ 24/7 its not really going to do any damage to the cpu

 

[oldfordfreak]

Thanks! It is only $25 bucks. lol Not a bad deal for a free processor replacement. It is comforting to know that I am not going to hurt the processor too bad as long as I am not an idiot. Great explanations and tips!