At what temp does the CPU life degrade?

[MistahHaskins]

I'm not concerned about my 5600x temps, highest I have seen it go gaming wise was 73c using the Cooler Master Hyper 212 BE cooler. As for a 5600x, that was to be expected and until it reaches 85c I am not worried about it. 

 

But let me ask, at what temperature does the lifespan of the chip start to degrade? I am asking because this has always interested me! I have seen video of people benchmarking the 5600x using the stock cooler and was hitting highs of 77-79c on certain titles, and the highest was 87c on BFV during someones benchmarking session which was consistent in all the tests he did which didn't seem to bother him at all!

 

I would like the keep my 5600x for as long as possible and that means understanding the limitations set by AMD or Intel regarding safe operational temps.

 

Now I have to take into consideration that many who are using their chips are more than likely either running a small overclock or a heavy overclock so to simply keep the data all the same we are saying that they aren't using any overclock and the clock speeds and all that are stock.

 

So what is the limit where one should be worried about their chips life being littled away sure to high temps ( and I know the thermal throttling limit for most AMD chips is 95c but we are talking no thermal throttling at all!)

[Slottr]

1 minute ago, MistahHaskins said:

( and I know the thermal throttling limit for most AMD chips is 95c but we are talking no thermal throttling at all!)

This is about where you start to reach unsafe temperatures. Anything below that is fine.

Heat is far less dangerous, and parts are far more resilient than I think you're taking them for 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

7 minutes ago, MistahHaskins said:

what is the limit where one should be worried about their chips life being littled away [due] to high temps

Unless you are routinely hitting the thermal throttle limit, you should not be worried about it. In most cases the longevity of a CPU far exceeds it's usefulness as anything other than a paper weight.

[Kilrah]

My 5960X with its heavy overclock will quickly hit the 100° limit and throttle down a bit when under extended full load... it's been doing that for 7 years and counting.

 

 

[GuiltySpark_]

This is always a fun one to answer. So, your CPU will last 34.2 years instead of 35 years if you run it at 90c 24/7. I'm exaggerating here and making these numbers up but its to help you understand how much you don't need to worry about it.

[YoungBlade]

TL;DR - Don't worry about the CPU. The motherboard will die first 99 times out of 100.

 

Let me tell you about a computer: a Dell Precision T3500 circa 2010 with a Xeon X5650 6-core CPU.

 

When I got it in 2017, I found from the SMART data that the hard drive had been running almost continuously for the lifetime of the computer - there were less than 30 power cycles and the power on hours indicated that it had run for over 5 years. In other words, the processor had been running continuously for that time. My best guess is that it was a server in its former life.

 

The cooling solution is... interesting. It has a giant heatsink that is cooled by an intake fan, but without a shroud to direct the airflow. Not ideal by any means, but that's Dell for you. At full load, the processor goes into the 70-80C region, and it often runs around 35-40C at idle.

 

I used it for a few years as a second computer, sometimes using it as a streaming machine, which put heavy load on the CPU for hours on end. Now, it belongs to my sister, who is getting good use out of it as her main computer for web browsing, media consumption, and playing the Sims 4.

 

This is normal for processors. They can run for over a decade with no problems, change hands multiple times, be under suboptimal thermal situations, and yet they just keep going.

 

But I've seen computers outright fail, and you know what usually gets them? The motherboard. The reason my sister bought that computer from me is that her laptop stopped working properly. Best as I can tell, the power delivery on the motherboard is messed up, preventing the GTX 960M from working and limiting the CPU to a throttling speed. My former laptop? Also power failure, this time the port shorted out - the motherboard has a brown patch on it. My mom's last laptop? Odd glitching behavior, USB drop outs, and weird crashes. She spilled soda on it, and it fried something on the board - she said she heard the soda hissing like it was boiling under the keyboard, so it was probably a short, or several. And one of my desktops, a Lenovo K450, seems to have a failed capacitor, as it can't display video out sometimes, either via iGPU or discrete, yet leaving it unplugged with the CMOS battery pulled for a few days temporarily fixes it.

 

I've never seen a CPU fail. It's not that it doesn't happen, but for all intents and purposes, it basically doesn't. If you're running at stock, expect it to last beyond a decade no problem. But the board? That's another story.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

21 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I've never seen a CPU fail.

I had a G3258 fail on me. No clue why. It certainly wasn't heat. But it was actually a blessing in disguise because, since it was already dead, I was able to use it risk-free for my first go at delidding before I did the real thing on my i7 4790K.

 

Anyway, in my ±20 years of tinkering with (stupidly) and building computers for myself, family, and friends, that is the only CPU that I've ever had fail on me. I'm sure I could pull the first CPU I ever bought for myself, a Core 2 Duo e7200, out of the static-free box I keep it in and it would still boot up just fine despite me running it for years with a >50% overclock.

[freeagent]

I personally haven’t had a CPU die, it’s almost always the board that goes first. I do have a dead 3770K though, it came with my Z77 OC Formula

 

The board was insulated so that CPU died closer to 7GHz.

[aDoomGuy]

95°C is not dangerous for the CPU. For good measure though I like to keep it below 70° but that's just the way I am atm. As long you don't overclock and push up them voltages it is not a problem. Voltages are more dangerous than temps.

[PrinnyExplodes]

CPU degradation is very very slow and it usually voltage that degrades it.  I had a old 4770k build that I overclocked to 4.4ghz at the time I ran prime everything was fine. After 8 years I wanted to sell it but so I did the same steps, ran prime and found that it bsoded. Ended up having to increase the V cores slightly to maintain stability. Might just something else degrading on the motherboard over the years of abuse (like the vrms)

[NighhhT]

The CPU always degrades, of course it degrades quicker with higher temperature and higher voltages.

For example, I have an i5 2500K (I've been using it daily for more than 10 years now) that I'm still currently using, for the first few years I ran it at 4.5Ghz all cores with out any issues (temps were never higher that ~75 °C,  used the lowest possible voltage while maintaining stability, always using a safe/tested voltages).

Then It started fail, so I have to go 4.4Ghz, a few years later the same happend so I had to set it to 4.3Ghz (always using the same V).

 

So last year I decided to lower the voltage and set it to 4.2Ghz and it has been working without any troubles for ~3/2 years now. A cheap i3 12100 will beat the crap out of my OCed 2500K, so the point is, get the most of your CPU (safely) because It will become obsolete by the time it dies (if it does).

 

So don't worry too much, try to keep the CPU as cool as you can ( below ~80 °C is good imo). by the time the CPU dies, there will be much better CPUs.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, MistahHaskins said:

But let me ask, at what temperature does the lifespan of the chip start to degrade?

Anything past 110c (therm-trip ie: board shuts off) will quickly degrade a cpu. 

Using high amp will quickly degrade a cpu. (severe over-volting and all core usage)

 

Specifics AMD processors depending on generation.

Ryzen 1000&2000 series 95c throttle

Ryzen 3000&5000 series 90c throttle

High temp alert (all gens) 70c (stock set up all defaults, cpu fan commanded 100% duty cycle)

Thermal Trip (all gens) 110c Motherboard shuts off. Beyond, start degradation!! 

[MistahHaskins]

So reading this thread, I have just deduced that CPU's are meant to get hot, and they have certain situation where one might fail (Bent pins or other errors)

[freeagent]

23 hours ago, PrinnyExplodes said:

CPU degradation is very very slow and it usually voltage that degrades it.  I had a old 4770k build that I overclocked to 4.4ghz at the time I ran prime everything was fine. After 8 years I wanted to sell it but so I did the same steps, ran prime and found that it bsoded. Ended up having to increase the V cores slightly to maintain stability. Might just something else degrading on the motherboard over the years of abuse (like the vrms)

That is just from all the spectre/meltdown mitigations. I just got my 3770K stable when they started rolling them out. Destroyed my overclock and have to use more voltage. Intel CPU’s are pretty tough. I haven’t beat on my AMDs as much because part of me thinks they are fragile.. meanwhile I have hit OTP with them quite a few times

[MistahHaskins]

6 minutes ago, freeagent said:

That is just from all the spectre/meltdown mitigations. I just got my 3770K stable when they started rolling them out. Destroyed my overclock and have to use more voltage. Intel CPU’s are pretty tough. I haven’t beat on my AMDs as much because part of me thinks they are fragile.. meanwhile I have hit OTP with them quite a few times

I was thinking about undervolting my 5600x, I am not a hardcore gamer and I usually play low settings on everything because its just more visible for me like that. 

 

I was using Ryzen Master to well test things, so I had the default setting: All Peak Core Voltage was at 1.31875 Volt and the Core Clock Speeds were Auto so boosted max to 4650mhz.

 

I fiddled with it to where I would see no performance drops but keep some consistent temperature reading from MSI Afterburner and HwInfo, and in some titles I gained FPS like Battlefield 4. I changed the Peak Voltage down to 1.25625 Volts and the Clock Speeds to 3800mhz which base speeds for the 5600x are 3600mhz. 

 

So I was wondering if running it like this would also damage the chip and if even using Ryzen Master would be a great pick for it. I don't know how to do this same thing on my Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2 BIOS since there aren't any clear cut tutorials or straight up guides on the best undervolt and underclocking for the 5600x

[freeagent]

You wont hurt it, I have beaten my 5600X because it likes it

 

I cannot emphasize enough just how much I hate the 212 series of coolers, they are absolute shit. I do have one so I am allowed to call it names

 

But.. my 5600X is one of the coolest running CPU's that I have owned in recent memory, it really is a treat to use. If you can, grab a better cooler, something like Thermalright PA120 or FC140. FC140 is a badass cooler. 

 

Edit:

 

My girl workin the pole:

 

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/17/2022 at 7:53 PM, MistahHaskins said:

at what temperature does the lifespan of the chip start to degrade?

thats not how it works... it starts to degrade the moment you put power through it, high temps obviously don't help, but cpus don't last forever,  average probably around ~10 years (just a guess, would be nice to have some actual stats on that), you'll know when the degradation becomes actually noticeable. 

 

2 hours ago, freeagent said:

My girl workin the pole:

 

yeehaaw, sexy!