Questions About Overclocking and Warrenties

[SkyPhantom]

Disclaimer: I'm posting this in General Discussion because it pertains to multiple topics 

My friend got an Alienware Aurora for Christmas (Even though I told him I'd build him a PC) and he's been having problems where the fan will randomly ramp up. I remember in the Secret Shopper series Linus did that they had a similar problem with their Alienware. In the video the problem disappeared when they tried to overclock the system. My question is if I were to overclock the CPU to try to get rid of the problem, would that void the warranty. I ask this, because I believe there is a Teckquicke or something that mentions this. This also got me thinking about other overclocks and how their warrenties apply. Like if I were to XMP overclock my RAM does that void any warrenties or do I have to go beyond that or does it not matter at all. Or if I overclock my GPU does that void the warranty? What if the GPU is factory overclocked and I overclock it farther? What if I slightly overclock my CPU for a short amount of time? Basically what I'm getting at is what overclocking voids warrenties and if I were to RMA how would they know it was overclocked. I'm new to PC building and I want to know how warrenties work in case I have to RMA in the future. 

 

[Lurick]

Overclocking where you push a stupid amount of voltage and disable the protections which basically fries the CPU is about the only way to really do it that I can think of. There isn't any way for them to know if you did a basic overclock of any kind anyway unless they see scorch marks or something that indicates you did something really dumb.

[thedangerine]

Typically overclocking will void warranties. If it's from Dell I would try to see what they can do with the warranty. Although as long as you don't pump a dumb amount of voltage into the cpu an overclock shouldn't hurt anything

[LogicalDrm]

First of all, XMP isn't overclocking. Its just boosting from stock RAM clocks to highest modules are capable of.

 

Second of all. Overclocking doesn't void warranties. Hasn't done that since it became mainstream and pretty much every brand has their automatic thing in play. However, there might be case to make (if explicitly said in warranty leaflets) if running CPU on very high voltages bricks it, then it isn't covered. But considering mobos have safe guards in place (auto-shutdown and throttling), getting it to that point means you know 100% what you are doing.

[SkyPhantom]

Thanks everyone for the info. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be voiding and warrenties on my system or my friend's. Also I was just genuinely curious, so thanks everyone for responding.

[harryk]

Yes overclocking will void warranty. From Intel's standard warranty:

"WHAT THIS LIMITED WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER: any Product which has been modified or operated outside of Intel’s publicly available specifications, including where clock frequencies or voltages have been altered"