Mad friend?

Train27 · April 26, 2016

So I was talking with a friend of mine who said he bought a new pc recently (desktop pc) and that he bought a good model of CPU (amd) at a very good price because of a clearance sale at an online shop. He didn't say the exact model because he couldn't remember, but he said it ran at 3.8GHz at minimum clock speed, and he overclocked it to 4.8GHz in the BIOS.

I quickly started raising an eyebrow, as it sounded very show-off... We're talking about a guy who's into computers, but doesn't really know that much. He actually cools the cpu only with a big heat sink and a very cheap watercooling device. Also, I've never seen (on usual pc's) higher clockspeeds than 4.1GHz.

The thing is, he sounded very worry when I told him what I thought, as he might have modified something dangerous on the bios that may drasticly shorten the lifespan of his cpu.

Any advice? Sorry for the lack of information but I only see him from time to time and I wanted to help him.

As always, thanks in advance.

Droidbot · April 26, 2016

he's probably overvolted the CPU

too much will dramatically decrease the lifespan

Benergy · April 26, 2016

1 minute ago, Train27 said:

So I was talking with a friend of mine who said he bought a new pc recently (desktop pc) and that he bought a good model of CPU (amd) at a very good price because of a clearance sale at an online shop. He didn't say the exact model because he couldn't remember, but he said it ran at 3.8GHz at minimum clock speed, and he overclocked it to 4.8GHz in the BIOS.

I quickly started raising an eyebrow, as it sounded very show-off... We're talking about a guy who's into computers, but doesn't really know that much. He actually cools the cpu only with a big heat sink and a very cheap watercooling device. Also, I've never seen (on usual pc's) higher clockspeeds than 4.1GHz.

The thing is, he sounded very worry when I told him what I thought, as he might have modified something dangerous on the bios that may drasticly shorten the lifespan of his cpu.

Any advice? Sorry for the lack of information but I only see him from time to time and I wanted to help him.

As always, thanks in advance.

If it's stable and doesn't run too hot, there's not too much to worry about.

Yes it will shorten the lifespan as does all overclocking, but considering most people change CPUs every several years this shouldn't be a problem.

4.8 is pretty normal for some of those AMD CPUs.

xentropa · April 26, 2016

I think its plausible. The 4790k runs at 4.4 ghz stock. 4.8 might be achievable.

JPotze · April 26, 2016

2 minutes ago, Train27 said:

So I was talking with a friend of mine who said he bought a new pc recently (desktop pc) and that he bought a good model of CPU (amd) at a very good price because of a clearance sale at an online shop. He didn't say the exact model because he couldn't remember, but he said it ran at 3.8GHz at minimum clock speed, and he overclocked it to 4.8GHz in the BIOS.

I quickly started raising an eyebrow, as it sounded very show-off... We're talking about a guy who's into computers, but doesn't really know that much. He actually cools the cpu only with a big heat sink and a very cheap watercooling device. Also, I've never seen (on usual pc's) higher clockspeeds than 4.1GHz.

The thing is, he sounded very worry when I told him what I thought, as he might have modified something dangerous on the bios that may drasticly shorten the lifespan of his cpu.

Any advice? Sorry for the lack of information but I only see him from time to time and I wanted to help him.

As always, thanks in advance.

the only thing i can say is that you should tell him to watch the temps of the cores. for other info we need more specific information. But 4.8ghz sounds strange.

Benergy · April 26, 2016

1 minute ago, xentropa said:

I think its plausible. The 4790k runs at 4.4 ghz stock. 4.8 might be achievable.

They are very different CPUs.

It's easy to hit 5GHz on a 8350 - this does not necessarily mean it's faster than the 4790k as Intel CPUs tend to have a higher IPC (instructions per cycle).

So the 4790k has 4,400,000,000 cycles per second, but processes more instructions on each of those cycles (let's say 3 instructions)

Whereas the 8350 has 4,800,000,000 cycles per second, but proccesses less instructions on each cycle (let's say 2 instructions).

This means the 4790k processes 13,200,000,000 instructions per second (assuming optimal conditions) whereas the 8350 only processes 9,600,000,000 despite being clocked higher.