Overclocking Question

CatTNT · July 17, 2018

Does increasing voltage actually damage the component, or is it the excess heat created? If you never went above 50C (theoretically) could you crank the voltage as high as you want without damaging it?

suchamoneypit · July 17, 2018

Its actually kinda the opposite in my understanding, even if you keep temps very low, voltage IS what wears down the chip, and increasing voltage will always wear the chip down faster, however if you don't keep temps in check you will further increase this wear and of course temp is a barrier to how high of and overclock you can get.

So even if you have really low temps, increasing voltage will still wear down your chip. Cranking voltage to extreme levels could just flat out fry the chip if you aren't under something like LN2. This isn't to scare you though, increasing voltage a little isn't gonna fry your chip quickly or really significantly reduce lifespan. The way I always looked at it was if the chip was able to last 10 years stock, by putting an extreme OC on it even if you say reduced its lifespan (this i figure is a worst case) to 4-5 years, the chances you are going to still be using that chip in 4-5 years is so low it doesn't even matter; in my mind more than justifying getting 20-40% more performance in the 1-3 years im using it. If you enthusiast overclocking anyways you're probably getting a new chip every 1-2 years.

I've put my 1700x, 5820k, and 4690k through some serious abuse and they all handled it like champs for quite a while (besides the 1700x as its rather new). Especially my 5820k, that thing has seen some shit, and came out fine after years of it. Worth noting all of these were/are cooled by either 240 or 280mm AIO coolers.

InMiseryWeSeekPancakes · July 17, 2018

i didn't know that... lovely.

WereCat · July 17, 2018

28 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

Does increasing voltage actually damage the component, or is it the excess heat created? If you never went above 50C (theoretically) could you crank the voltage as high as you want without damaging it?

Too high voltage will eventually degrade the silicon even if you can run the CPU/GPU on ambient temperature all the time.