overclock Can You Negate All Damage From OC?

[nEAt]

So I've been starting to mess around with OC, mostly to see those FPS numbers go above and beyond what anyone would think is necessary (my setup will not truly require OC for a good couple of years). I read that the main problem with overclocking any system component is the heat and the damage that accumulates over time due to that excessive heat. So it got me thinking: If I have a good enough cooling solution, is it possible to overclock my rig without shortening the life-span of my components? Just a thought I had, if this isn't possible I'll appreciate it if you took the time to give an excited newbie a little more information and educate me

[sl06bhytmar]

Simple answer: no

 

More complex answer: partially yes. Overclocking means you're increasing heat output but heatoutput is result of electricity moving from place a to b. During this movement some material is lost within the transfer channel and eventually when enough time has passed the connection has separated.

Lowing temperatures of the processor you simply keep gate leak to minimal, higher the temps, bigger the leak is thus shortening the life of processor because you're wasting electricity by making those leaks bigger which turn into heat.

Anyway if we are to believe calculated processor life time it is well over 20 years and overclocking you simply turn that 20 years into something like 10 or more years. That is the reason why we won't see problems from overclocking processors, we are simply using its full potential until its end of life when we completely upgrade our systems every 4-5 years.

[APasz]

Simply keeping the chip cool is all you can do. These claims about the transistors wearing out is almost complete nonsense, they are electrical components not mechanical. That's not to say that it's a non-issue, more that you'll have problems with degradation of the silicon before wear and tear start to play a major role.

The best temp to keep you chip is as low as possible down to about 5c. 30-50 is the best range.

[2FA]

The temperature may not cause issues but the voltage still will. I believe Barnacules had a system with an i7 980X that was overclocked really high, around 4.6 or 4.7GHz I believe, and had a full custom loop but over the years, the max stable clock speed has decreased due to the fairly high voltage needed to maintain that clock speed and I believe it is only stable below 4.5GHz now. 

 

Either way, mild overclocks won't cause a noticeable amount of wear but extreme overclocks definitely will.

[W-L]

30 minutes ago, nEAt said:

So I've been starting to mess around with OC, mostly to see those FPS numbers go above and beyond what anyone would think is necessary (my setup will not truly require OC for a good couple of years). I read that the main problem with overclocking any system component is the heat and the damage that accumulates over time due to that excessive heat. So it got me thinking: If I have a good enough cooling solution, is it possible to overclock my rig without shortening the life-span of my components? Just a thought I had, if this isn't possible I'll appreciate it if you took the time to give an excited newbie a little more information and educate me

Welcome to the Forums!

 

In general overclocking as long as your are not applying extremely high voltages the degradation is usually negligible since the hardware will be obsolete at that point. The largest difference you may see potentially is needing to increase voltage for the same overclock as it ages but other than that it won't have huge effects. 

[WoodenMarker]

Higher voltage and temps will wear down your hardware more quickly. There's no undoing that but oc'ing doesn't necessarily mean higher voltage and temps.