To overclock or not to overclock, that is the question

[thurcombe]

I have been thinking about this for a while, my CPU is maxed out most of the time (Celeron 556) as I do a fair amount of graphical work.

I understand that you can damage the CPU by overclocking but is the damage cause purely by the heat generated by overclocking or are there other factors that cause the damage?

Any comments gratefully received

[hiredgoonz]

If you overclock the cpu without adjusting the voltage, the cpu itself shouldn't have any problems with being damaged...the problem is that when you adjust the front side bus, you run all your pci/agp components and memory out of spec, which can damage them or cause data loss/corruption...

If you have to increase the voltage to maintain stability at the higher speed, then the chip will not only get hotter, but at a microscopic level, the electrons that travel through the paths on the chip can "overflow" kind of like a raging river. This can eventually destroy the cpu, but as long as you keep it cool and don't go crazy, even if you cut the chip life in half, you could get 10 years out of it.

Much longer than you'll probably have the cpu...




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When all else fails, read the instructions.