Dangers of overclocking

jak/mar

What are the dangers of overclocking?
Like will I burn the house down if I up the Voltage too much?

youcancallmeal

Extremely unlikely you will burn anything down but you may destroy components of your PC. The fact you are even asking a question like this would lead me to believe you should do a lot more research before attempting to overclock

Hercule

housefires arent that big a risk

You can permanently fry hardware if you get the mix of voltages/clocks wrong - it take some stupidity to really push things that far however - Increase things in small incremenents (never rush an overclock) and test each setting for temperatures before moving onto a higher level - most new/decent hardware will have lots of failsafes that will protect the hardware if the settings arent right. Of all the people I know who have overclocked PCs (myself included) I dont know any that have ever fryed a component -

Also, dont expect magic results either. A stable +10% overclock would be a reasonable target to set yourself - there is no value in nuking hardware up to ridiculous levels unless you are trying to benchmark a high 3dmark/pcmark score on a once-off occasion. Otherwise the various bottlenecks of a build will hold back average performance regardless of how well things are overclocked.

jak/mar

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Extremely unlikely you will burn anything down but you may destroy components of your PC. The fact you are even asking a question like this would lead me to believe you should do a lot more research before attempting to overclock

Thanks.
I have already overclocked but that was just raising the multiplyer (PhenomII x3 720).
I was just making sure that I wouldn't burn anything going further.
And I have done research:)

PogMoThoin

If You have to ask then You shouldn't be attempting it at all

L31mr0d

jak/mar wrote: »

I have already overclocked but that was just raising the multiplyer (PhenomII x3 720).

What are you using to stress test the PC after increasing the multi. and are you using any applications to monitor your system temps?

Gurgle

PogMoThoin wrote: »

If You have to ask then You shouldn't be attempting it at all

Because the only people qualified to do over-clocking are those who know all about it on instinct?
Helpful :rolleyes:

OP, 2 simple rules
Don't turn the voltage up past the maximum spec for the series.
Enable thermal shut-down on your motherboard (at 85°C)

Then you can mess around all you like with multipliers and bus speeds without any risk to your hardware.

If the chip is running too fast your system will fail and blue-screen.

Each time this happens there is a small chance that your OS will be screwed up and you'll have to repair / re-install.

If you're doing hardware-mods (pin-strapping, track cutting etc) you can cause permanent damage. These should be approached much more cautiously.

jak/mar

L31mr0d wrote: »

What are you using to stress test the PC after increasing the multi. and are you using any applications to monitor your system temps?

I use AMD Overdrive and Prime95 to stress and I monitor my temps with SpeedFan,CoreTemp and AMD Overdrive.


I went ahead and went to 3.4 ran Prime and blue screened, uped the Voltage 0.025,ran Prime and blue screened.
So then I just put it back to want it was and ran prime and was fine.

Guess I should leave overclocking for a few years.:)

PogMoThoin

Gurgle wrote: »

Because the only people qualified to do over-clocking are those who know all about it on instinct?
Helpful :rolleyes:

Thats not what I meant, when he asked the question he had already overclocked, should have googled and asked questions first.

jak/mar wrote:

I have already overclocked but that was just raising the multiplyer (PhenomII x3 720).
I was just making sure that I wouldn't burn anything going further.

RoyalMarine

jak/mar wrote: »

I use AMD Overdrive and Prime95 to stress and I monitor my temps with SpeedFan,CoreTemp and AMD Overdrive.


I went ahead and went to 3.4 ran Prime and blue screened, uped the Voltage 0.025,ran Prime and blue screened.
So then I just put it back to want it was and ran prime and was fine.

Guess I should leave overclocking for a few years.:)

why not go for 3.0 or 3.2