Have you ever killed a motherboard, CPU or GPU trying to overclock it?

[vkadurin]

Please share your experience with overclocking. Guys like me, which are willing to try OC, but are afraid not to kill some component, will highly appreciate it. What is the real possibility of things to go wrong?

[SirReallySam]

Agreed, would love to hear some tips and stories of not to do and what to do... :)

I've only ever overclocked my graphics card and not much at all.

[virusal19]

I haven't encounter any problems with overclocking... yet.

 

I have overclocked my i7 3770K to 4.8Ghz on a H100 and still no problems. 

I haven't overclocked my GPU yet but surely it can't be much of a difference. 

 

My advice is, don't be afraid to get out of your comfortable zone, try new things, live life at its fullest. The possibility that things will go wrong are unlikely, with many safety features in place now days the worst thing that can happen is a hard shut down or a crash. If it is your first time overclocking, don't rush it, go slow and you should be safe.

 

Happy Overclocking!  

[christoi]

If you take the necessary precautions, there's really nothing to be worried about. There will obviously be risks if you attempt to tweak settings without knowing what they do (or what values are safe, especially with voltages), but for a light overclock it's usually not an issue.

 

First things first however, what are your system specs? Having proper components is very important, you wouldn't want to try overclock with a $50 board for obvious reaons.

[tabuburn]

Well, my friend fried his board when he used crappy 8pin EPS extension cables, if that counts. The connectors actually started melting before the board just went RIP.

[Spannerhands]

As long as you dont do anything retarded you will be fine.

Check settings twice and lookup all maximum volltages, keep constant eye on temps and do things in small steps...

Retarded would be looking at someones settings that used liquid nitrogen cooling for a 6GHz OC. And wondering why things go bad when your running a standard cpu cooler...

[tabuburn]

Modern CPU's shouldn't fry anyway since they have a fail safe in place that cuts power the moment they get too hot. Motherboards shouldn't fry unless you have no airflow going through the VRM heatsinks. GPU's are the riskiest if you are not careful, too much overvolting in combination with bad airflow will kill it outright.

[David89]

Nope. The only thing i encountered was, that after 2 Years of constant overclocking a Phenom X3 couldn't handle the overclock anymore. It got unstable, so i clocked it down and it runs fine now in my parent's PC

[XiaoPigs]

Overclocking these days is really really simple.

You start out with a set frequency, let's say 4.2ghz, using the multiplier and adjusting the voltages.(I'm not giving you numbers cause each chip varies) After that you run a stability test for an hour or so(prime95 is a great tool) and you rinse and repeat till you get your desired frequency on your CPU

[parashpa]

Never had a CPU or Motherboard fry. 

[Art Vandelay]

I set my DDR2 to 12V and a clock speed of infinite. It exploded.

[kaneandtaker]

Thankfully no. Would be so mad at myself if I did because hardware over here is so expensive.

[rossi94]

Yes, I killed a 775 mainboard which had no mosfet cooler while overclocking a Core2duo and a GTX 260 ^^

[tabuburn]

Yes, I killed a 775 mainboard which had no mosfet cooler while overclocking a Core2duo and a GTX 260 ^^

Heh. Reminds me of when I used a GPU only water block and didn't bother adding heatsinks to the VRM/Power phases on a GTX480.

[Darell3]

I have my FX-6100 @ 4.2ghz on 1.41 volts and my vrms have no cooling apart from passive cooling.. Im walking on the edge xD. Also my motherboard only supports 10% overclocking, I have past that as well LOL. SOOO Im really on the edge.

[DoctorNick]

I burned some pins on my i7 875K@4,4ghz(22x200mhz) after overclocking my Elpida Hyper memory to  2400mhz - 7-7-7-21@1.65v. It was stable for about 2-3 months, after it wasn't lol.  :D

[tito]

I killed a 9600GT, It was oc'ed a lot, but the fan got stucked with a wire from the power supply and died.

[joelthezombie15]

if i hadnt been careful i could have fried everything in my case.

 

i was gonna sleeve my psu cables and when i took the sleeving off the insulation was coming off and it would short out and killed everything so its a good thing i did that even though i cant return it 

[bradscoolio]

I haven't killed anything yet, I'm to cautious because I have very little emergency part replacement money.