Quote:
Originally Posted by Skold
Run it for a bit under stress, if it doesnt crash your good. If at any time later(after its been tested) it crashes, underclock it back to its original settings. Overclocking, no matter what cooling, will always shorten the life of your hardware at least a little bit.
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While this is true, the life expectancy of parts has increased these past few years.. and it's very likely that even with a mediocre overclock, the parts will still last you until it's time to upgrade (approx 2 years).
So yes, it will shorten the life of your parts - but the chances are you'll change the parts before they die anyway and you'll never even know.. Of course there is always the chance, even without an overclock, that the part will die prematurely -- that's unavoidable, and overclocking does increase the frequency of this (OC'd parts have a higher rate of failure).
Really, thats the biggest downside to overclocking.. Increasing the chances of a premature death.. The part wearing down is very very unlikely to affect most people who upgrade in a reasonable time period.
Think of it like a car.. A car can go 20 years before dying out.. or a car could crash, and thus end prematurely... That's your standard clocked component... Now an overclocked component would be a car with aftermarket performance mods, the car goes quicker, handles better, whatever... Now this will burn the engine out quicker.. say 12 years opposed to 20.. but the chances of crashing the car are now higher than before. The average ownership of a car is something like 4 years I believe, I may be wrong on this but I did hear it at some point. So the likelyhood of the car naturally dying out with OR without the "overclock" are unlikely to affect the average car owner... Leaving only the increased chance of crashing as a drawback (ignoring increased fuel usage).
Over-tuning a car, however, will lead to an impromtu death - applies to overclocking too
Basically, overclocking isn't as dangerous as some people will try and tell you - as long as you do it within appropriate limits.