Does overclocking void warranties?

Well, I haven't worked for a warranty provider for a few years now, I work for the state government now. However, back when I did work for a private company basically this is how the system works. Your technical staffed become certified, which allows them to become full on warranty service providers. Clients bring you in their busted equipment or call you out onsite. We did both business and consumer stuff. On site service cost you more money though, where as carry in warranty was free as long as the warranty was valid. Every time you make a repair under warranty for any company be it, HP, Compaq, Apple, Gateway, Sony, etc. your company gets paid per a repair a flat rate called warranty reimbursement. For example, if I ordered and replaced a powersupply in a HP computer, HP paid my company like 45 dollars to do the work for them. Now a lot of companies have limits and grading systems, and they at any time can pull your ASP status if they wish.

So, you can't order like the same part 5,000 times in one day to make a lot of money for your company. You also can't make claims every single day on the same serial number to make money. You also get graded and how well you score determines your pay scale. So, if you diagnose and repair things right with out having to repair it again and again your score was better. Therefore you made more money. Every company has a report abuse option you can file on any claim. This immediately flags the serial number as being abused.

If my company were audited and we were caught vouching for abused systems for warranty they could pull our license. Another scenario would be we sent in the bad part (they always require the defective part) and they determine it was abuse for whatever reason and then they don't pay you and bill you for the new part you got. Well, this is of course their prices and not retail. So like a processor may cost 500 bucks from a company where as you can go to a store and buy it retail for 200. So that money then comes out of the companies pocket and then they go on and try to bill the customer for it since it was abuse. In my experience if you actually got the part fixed/replaced and they rejected the claim and you already had your machine fixed, my company almost always just ate the cost to keep the customer happy. There were some repeat offenders we ended up charging, and some parts we would never cover, like laptop screens.

Currently I am Apple, HP/Compaq, and Gateway certified. So I could feasibly order parts myself for my own equipment if need and no one would ever know. However, the company you work for has to be a business partner with that company or you have to have your own business and apply for partnership. So, if I retired tomorrow I would then lose all access to ordering parts unless I started my own company and applied to become an authorized service provider.

Most of the time if there is no clear and present evidence they can't say that it was abused. If there are certain parts of the chip that went bad, say like the core from reaching too high temperatures then yeah they could reject the claim.
 
I went to overclock my 8800 and it had one of those things with all the terms and conditions I read it because it wasn't long but basically it said if the damage is caused by overclocking then it wont cover it. I clicked "I accept" and a .reg file came up on firefox, it changed two things, I cant seem to find the CD right now so I cant get that file but could it have possibly been that it put say a "mark" on my system? By the way its an xfx 8800 GT 512MB the slightly overclocked one. They didn't have any normal ones in stock.
 
tlarkin: Thanks for the advice.

shenry: sounds as if your card could have left some kind of a log in your system, that you had tried to overclock. Maybe this could be as simple as a single changed value in the cards firmware?... which they could check the state of, and know that it'd been overclocked.
 
That's what I thought. Anyway I dug up the CD and found it.

Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NvCplApi\Policies]
"ContextUIPolicy"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]
"CoolBits"=dword:00000003

Anyway it tells me to go display properties > settings > 8800 GT > Additional Properties and then a couple of other options that aren't there now.....

Anyway I bet I could have used something like Rivia Tuner and wouldn't have had to do this. But I did, and I guess there's no one to blame but me.
 
shenry, i looked on XFX's website and found their warranty information for people in america

they have lifetime warranty for the 1st and 2nd owner.

and they will take it even if its been overclocked.


im gonna ask them if its the same in australia, i hope it is.
 
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I overclocked my 8600GTS and when I used the step up program (for a 8800GT) EVGA didn't even question me on it...oh and I took the Serial Number Sticker (Usually found on the back of the card) off too...which also voids the warranty. I called them about it and everything was fine.

EVGA FTW
 
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