Does cpu overclocking reduce the lifespan

[NoHamNoJam]

If yes how much I'm curious

[ThinkWithPortals]

1 minute ago, NoHamNoJam said:

If yes how much I'm curious

It does, but as long as you're not pushing crazy voltage through it and you're cooling it properly then it shouldn't be by much. You would probably have upgraded/replaced the CPU anyway before it died from overclocking.

[porina]

There is no short answer to this, as there are a load of variables. Don't go silly with the settings and it'll be ok for a useful lifetime.

[DisconnectedYT]

Not if you do it properly.

If you stay under intels reccomended voltages it will barely affect your CPU's lifespan BUT if you are like me and shuv 1.7V into it then your CPU will last a year insteam of 10 years.

[Naeaes]

There's no universal answer to this. Different types of CPUs suffer from the added heat and current differently. There's even too much variance between individual units to give exact numbers. It's just the luck of the draw. Even without overclocking you don't know exactly how long your CPU is going to last. All we can say is generally speaking overclocking shortens the lifespan and the more you overclock the more you shorten it. And even then it's not to say there aren't units that don't suffer from it at all.

[manikyath]

overclocking -factually- shortens lifespan.

 

the question is, what is the "lifespan" of a piece of silicon? my pentium-S 133 from 1993 is still running happily, and basicly every connection on the mobo is bad by now, but the cpu is still going stronk.

[tlink]

yes it will always do this, overclocking your cpu is like redirecting more traffic over a bridge. the pavement degrades faster, and the hotter it is the more it will be affected by the increased traffic. a super cooled cpu will still see degradation from overclocking. its just ideal to keep it as cool as possible. it also differs per chip a lot, i've seen people do extreme overclocks and use the cpu for 5 years straight 6 hours a day.

 

just follow these rules and you'll be fine 95% of the time.

Quote

• Microcircuitry engineering is something like cooking: it involves a lot of probabilistcs and will often have a rather random results. So, you don't know how good a microchip is until you have fabricated it. Even then, deterioration will have too a bit of probabilistic behavior.
• 40ºC (104ºF) or below is heaven for every microchip.
• 50ºC (122ºF) is a not bad temperature for any microchip.
• Microchips starts getting damaged on its lifetime at 60ºC (140ºF).
• A chip running at 70ºC (158ºF) during 24 hours and 7 days a week, will probably last 2-6 years.
• A chip running at 80ºC (176ºF) during 24 hours and 7 days a week, will probably last 1-3 years.
• A chip running at 90ºC (194ºF) during 24 hours and 7 days a week, will probably last 6-20 months.
• In this matter there is no difference between main computer chips like GPU, CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge... etc.
• Given a temperature, it is harder for the chip to maintain it at high processor usage than at low processor usage. For example: a CPU that achieves 70ºC (158ºF) during 10 hours on nearly-inactive Windows desktop suffers less than a(nother) CPU that achieves 70ºC (158ºF) during 10 hours of intensive CPU processing (i.e: SuperPI). Some hardware engineers report this could be due to that in the second case the CPU uses most of the microcircuitry, and in the first case only a small part of it.
• The general rule: microcircuitry is like an ellectrical printed circuit board that has the tracks very close between them (there are often only 4-5 molecules between two tracks), so heating is slowly melting the tracks as time goes by. Keep things as cold as possible.
• The general rule when reading the manufacturer's data: they want for you not to care about refrigerating anything, because then it will get broken just after the warranty period (sometimes only a few weeks after it; it is incredible, I know). "It is just bussiness", Alcapone dixit.
• Preventing is important (better than waiting for failures to repair): when things start to fail, it could be due to tracks melting in the microcircuitry, or due to minor tracks dilatations. The second case is a temporal problem. The first one is probably a definitive one.

http://superuser.com/questions/749146/safe-long-term-cpu-temp

[incarnate]

Sorry answer is yes. Any overclocking will reduce the lifespan at least a little bit.

 

How much can't be answered specifically at all by anyone. So long as you don't push crazy voltages and keep the temps below 80°C for intel and 67°C for AMD fx (I think that's the temp if I'm not mistaken) and do regular maintenance like cleaning your fans and heatsinks/rad and replacing the thermal paste as needed, then you'll be just fine for the useful life of the cpu.