Overclock risks?

[Flowist]

I know overclock is used for some temporary speed. I heard lots of burning motherboards, rams when overclock fails.
So what do you know about overclock risks? Is it worth to hi-speed even it costs of a motherboard.

[subsistence]

Not necessarily burn the computer parts because almost all motherboards now has a safety function. Whereas if a device or PC part reaches its peak or hit a certain amount of temperature it will automatically shutdown.

General risks will be shortening the lifespan of THAT specific item you are overclocking IF not cooled properly.

Overclocking means you are supplying more voltage than the default setting. More voltage, more heat. More heat, Less lifespan. But don't worry it won't break in 6 or 7 months. For example your processor has a lifespan of 5 years it will narrow down to 4 or lower it really depends.

But be careful okay? Over voltage sometimes hurts the equipment. But this is when you do not know what you are doing.

[Neo]

You are right subsistence

And now with the intel i7 processor the cpu almost begs to be overclocked. Its designed to be overclocked in reasonable terms.

Just like sub says if you overclock it too much the pc shuts down and wont work until you change the numbers either lower or back to what it was from the start.

My intel i7 920 with 2.67 Ghz have been overclocked by me to 3.20 Ghz and that's more than the intel i7 940 that starts at 2.93GHz.

I have not changed the voltage either, pretty amazing!

[Vision]

Overclocking doesn't really hold TOO much of a risk nowadays since most parts are made to be overclocked... the only real reprecussion is overheating.

[Ework411]

I always overclock my computers, and have never had any issues with it. It may shorten your lifespan on parts a little; but realistically anyone serious enough about computers to overclock is probably going to be ready to upgrade anyway by that time. If you intend to overclock, I would recommend the following:

Do your research. If you don't know much about doing it; either spend some time reading up on how to do it properly, or consider paying a professional to do it and teach you what they are doing.

Use a good motherboard that has a dual Bios if you intend to change your bios settings. That way if you are new to tweaking Bios and mess something up; it will automatically load into the vanilla, unaltered bios.

Watercool! I know many people pass on this due to cost, but you should really consider it a good investment. Get good quality water cooling equipment, not the cheap stuff. Buying this is going to be much less expensive than replacing a high end CPU and MB. It can also be re-used when you upgrade those parts if you buy good equipment, so it will last you a long time.

Make sure to buy a fan controller that keeps track of your temperatures on your components. That way if you are running a high load and getting a little hotter than you like, you can increase your fan speeds to get more airflow. During times of low or non-use, you can scale the fans back to decrease noise.

Don't over-do it. You are not in a drag race, you do not have to go 0-60 in 5.2 seconds. Try nudging it up a little, and then testing it to see how it runs under a heavy load. If the temps stay good, tweak it up a little more.

Once you get more comfortable with doing it, you will have a better idea of what you can do with your individual equipment. Until then, safer is better than sorry. Just take adequate precautions, and you should not have any issues with overclocking.

[d404]

Overclocking doesn't really hold TOO much of a risk nowadays since most parts are made to be overclocked... the only real reprecussion is overheating.

Vision has pritty much summed this topic up.

What you might want to do is look into water cooling to tackle this issue. I've seen youtube videos of 3ghz cpu's run at 12ghz! (Obviously with extream cooling methods!) lol Anything is possible with money!

[Neo]

12 GHZ, that's impressive.

How long would that cpu last before it's useless ?

[mjaanbutt]

The risks are your CPU, GPU or memory might go up in smoke and not be usable. The overclocking settings are often under the bios setup screen in your boot cycle. If done successfully, it can produce a significant increase in computing speed. There are a number of overclocking newsgroups and it is wise to seek out users out first to learn previous experience. You will need to know what kind of motherboard you have, bios, memory type and all default timing, graphics card. PC Wizard is a free program that can tell you all the info you need.