Overclocking new i7

[ezelisko]

Hey, I have a question. I am going to be buying a comp that i set up (with the assistance of this forum) once I get back stateside. Regardless, my question is this: How much damage does overclocking your CPU do to the cpu itself?

Side question: I can get a used (barely used) i7 extreme for about 600. I looked up it's value for brand new and its around 1k-1100. No idea if I should snag it or not. Thanks for the heads up guys. Much appreciated.

 

[cjmarsh81]

I haven't heard of any permanent damage being done to intel cpu's from overclocking. (It may happen I just haven't seen it). I have seen some early AMD cpu's that were cooked as they didn't have built in thermal protection. I believe all the newer ones have this now.

If you overclock too far the system will become unstable and generate a lot of heat. All Intel CPU's have thermal shutdown built in so it shouldn't cook itself.

Personally I don't overclock anymore. Mainly because I find that the I7's in my machines are sufficiently fast enough already for whatever I have thrown at them. Also, because if something goes wrong on the system, ie application crashes, blue screens etc I always wonder is that because I have it overclocked.

You must be doing some serious number crunching to be considering overclocking an I7 extreme cpu.

 

[ezelisko]

You must be doing some serious number crunching to be considering overclocking an I7 extreme cpu.

I have thought about running about 3-4 monitors on the comp that I was talking about building earlier. Basically, I would be using this computer to 1. play games 2. make money (poker) 3. internet information/primary job learning and so on. I figured an i7 overclocked as well as an additional video card that I purchased would make the computer work really well. I probably won't do this, as I am still learning about computers, but it was an idea.