typical CPU life

newguy5

newguy5

New Member
just curious what the typical life of an average cpu is these days? particularly interested in the new c2d's, and even their lifespan while they are *slightly* overclocked.

the only reason i ask is because i read on tom's hardware that if you slightly overclock them they should last more than a year. that seemed VERY short of a lifespan to me. and the reason i say that is because i have an athlon 1600+ (old school) that has been running strong for 5 years now. i have replaced 1 motherboard, a psu, and a graphics card, but other than that, the original RAM, HD, and CPU are still kicking very strongly.

my windows xp boots up in easily less than one minute and i've never seen a dim in performance with my computer (other than the bad mobo and then psu).

i've had some intermittent no POST problems with it in the last 6 months (it's done it about 3 times in the last 6 months) and i've tested everything i can and nothing seems to be problematic. but that and the fact that i'm outdated as hell makes me want to upgrade my cpu/gpu/psu/mobo/ram, but i'm not real excited if my cpu is going to last only a year or so.

i'm also a big "if it's not broke then don't fix it" guy, and besides, all the games i play run fine with my computer now, and that even includes "far cry." what do you guys think?
 
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You hear people talking about overclocking shortening life spans of processors. You even hear of overclocked GPU's beginning to show artifacts and what not. However, I don't think I've heard of a CPU dying because of overclocking UNLESS it's some extrem amount.

I'm sure they all have their limit, but it's not like processors have a short lifespan in genreal. I still have computers from the 80s and early 90s that work perfectly. No overclocking of course :P

Sorry I can't give a direct answer, perhaps it's something you should research on google. I'm sure someone's tested it out!
 
Unless you are raising the voltage I don't think it will shorten the life of it, worst thing is gonna happen if you pushed the cpu beyond it's limits, it's gonna freeze the computer or reset it. usually because of the heat.
How far are you intending to overclock ?
 
The two Numero Uno(no. #1 you know) items that will kill a cpu faster then anything are heat and ocing! Heat can be seen without ocing so don't simply point at ocing as the reason seen for high temps. OCing places additional stresses on cpus and other hardwares when clocked as a rule. In general ocing will have it's long term effects depending on how often and how much you push it.

Another thing that will have a direct bearing on life span is the amount of hours a system is running. If you leave a system running 24/7 the cpu will obviously see more hours of use in one day. 24 When you are simply leaving a cpu at the oc setting while not running a system for more then several hours like 6-7hrs. as an example the stress there is about equal to the 24/7 wear and tear when the stock system is using stock cooling.
 
it will last until you have no interest in it anymore :)
I have my p4 running at 55 C \ 20 hours a day average some times I leave it open for weeks.I have it since 2003 no problems at all.
Don't worry about the life time of a processor it's not common for a processor to die unless you hurt it bad :)
usually they last for a very long time.
 
Shady said:
it will last until you have no interest in it anymore :)
I have my p4 running at 55 C \ 20 hours a day average some times I leave it open for weeks.I have it since 2003 no problems at all.
Don't worry about the life time of a processor it's not common for a processor to die unless you hurt it bad :)
usually they last for a very long time.
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so you guys actually turn your computers off at some point during a day?

my cpu has lasted flawlessly for the last 5 years and in it's entirety, has not been off for more than a dozen days (in total) in that time.
 
I don't over clock at all, but I still have some processors that run since the day I bought them:

CeleronA 300
PII 450
PIII 800E

all of those are old, and still run to this day no problems. I never overclocked, well I did overclock the celeron but it still works.
 
You are also dealing with a totally different type of cpu there as well. The old Pentiums and K5 cpus were for the most part soldered to the board and generally had adequate cooling with the stock hsf. Then the first removal types installed in sockets came along that ran cooler. Try running some P4s for five years with a stock hsf. You could probably still find some much older X86 systems floating around somewhere that still run.
 
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