I7 4770K Premature death

[LRC350]

I'm quite confused what happened to my CPU. I've had this CPU just over a year and overclocked at 4.2 @ 1.3V. The overclock was done with the Asus Ai tweaker. I was just wondering if it because of the OC or just a bad CPU overall. It couldn't have overheated because I'm quite anal when it comes to my temps. I was just watching Netflix and surfing the net when the CPU died. Now I have a brand new 4790K and want to make sure I didn't cause my CPUs premature death

 

So is it pretty common for CPUs to just die? 

[thekeemo]

Uhh no

[The Official Czex]

That voltage may have been too high for it. Did you turn the system off often or did you leave it on a lot of the time?

[GSTARR]

rip ur cpu

may it forever run multiple threads up there in cpu-heaven

[Analog]

I'm quite confused what happened to my CPU. I've had this CPU just over a year and overclocked at 4.2 @ 1.3V. The overclock was done with the Asus Ai tweaker. I was just wondering if it because of the OC or just a bad CPU overall. It couldn't have overheated because I'm quite anal when it comes to my temps. I was just watching Netflix and surfing the net when the CPU died. Now I have a brand new 4790K and want to make sure I didn't cause my CPUs premature death

 

So is it pretty common for CPUs to just die? 

 

Not really. CPUs rarely die and it is usually due to the owners lack of knowledge when it comes to overclocking them. Your case is a perfect example imo. You overclocked your CPU to 4.2GHz with the Asus utility. First off, those utilities are terrible. I am not singling out Asus here, everyone that has implemented such a thing is to blame. Most of these utilities, don't use a constant voltage, but a more aggressive Auto setting, that pumps more volts through your processor. In your case, 1.3V for a 4.2GHz overclock is insane frankly. On a 4770K you could have run a 4.5GHz oc with so much voltage. The other thing is that since it is basically a glorified Auto setting, some programs such as Prime95, basically over-volt your CPU even further causing it to degrade in an expedite rate. Last but not least, even if was a constant voltage was set it is extremely high for the target overclock. 

 

Therefore, do yourself a favor and overclock your processor manually through the BIOS or don't do it at all. That's my take on the issue. 

 

PS: I don't know what type of cooler you have, but for 1.3V on a 4770K it should be something quite beefy, since those processors do get quite toasty real fast. Those voltages are high-end air cooler territory. 

[scottyseng]

-snip-

 

Yeah, I would avoid the ASUS utility. I remember that on my Sandy Bridge, if you were to just press Extreme overclock and let it go, it reported 5.2GHz. Problem? It was overvolting to 1.52volts to get to that. It wasn't remotely stable either.

 

My safe sane manual overclock is 4.6GHz at 1.38v.

 

But no, it's not normal for CPUs to die. They're really resilient, even when overclocked safely. If it overheated, there are numerous ways the CPU tries to save itself, either through CPU throttling or flat out shutting down.

[LRC350]

Not really. CPUs rarely die and it is usually due to the owners lack of knowledge when it comes to overclocking them. Your case is a perfect example imo. You overclocked your CPU to 4.2GHz with the Asus utility. First off, those utilities are terrible. I am not singling out Asus here, everyone that has implemented such a thing is to blame. Most of these utilities, don't use a constant voltage, but a more aggressive Auto setting, that pumps more volts through your processor. In your case, 1.3V for a 4.2GHz overclock is insane frankly. On a 4770K you could have run a 4.5GHz oc with so much voltage. The other thing is that since it is basically a glorified Auto setting, some programs such as Prime95, basically over-volt your CPU even further causing it to degrade in an expedite rate. Last but not least, even if was a constant voltage was set it is extremely high for the target overclock. 

 

Therefore, do yourself a favor and overclock your processor manually through the BIOS or don't do it at all. That's my take on the issue. 

 

PS: I don't know what type of cooler you have, but for 1.3V on a 4770K it should be something quite beefy, since those processors do get quite toasty real fast. Those voltages are high-end air cooler territory. 

 

 

Yeah, I would avoid the ASUS utility. I remember that on my Sandy Bridge, if you were to just press Extreme overclock and let it go, it reported 5.2GHz. Problem? It was overvolting to 1.52volts to get to that. It wasn't remotely stable either.

 

My safe sane manual overclock is 4.6GHz at 1.38v.

 

But no, it's not normal for CPUs to die. They're really resilient, even when overclocked safely. If it overheated, there are numerous ways the CPU tries to save itself, either through CPU throttling or flat out shutting down.

Thanks guys for the insight. Since then I don't use that program anymore for CPU overclocks just monitoring my fans. I will further educated myself on how to overclock properly and safely.

[gt403cyl]

Just for comparison, I've been running my 4770k - 4.6GHZ @ 1.29v for the last 12 months, the last 5-6 months have been liquid cooled and temps are never above 62*C under load.

 

As others have said, Always do your homework when overclocking and ALWAYS do it BIOS.

[Cheddle]

with early i5/i7's the leading cause of death was the memory controller... running too high ram voltages was believed to be a cause of premature CPU death.

 

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2194391

 

or at least thats what Intel tech support are trained to tell people.