[SOLVED] Does a CPU lose lifespan if it’s been left unused?

[Deleted member 2808222]

I’m thinking of getting the i9-9900k before stores will stop selling it but might have it stored untouched in the box for 6-18 months. According to some sources, hard drives seem to lose lifespan if they are left unused, is this a similar thing with CPUs?
I’m looking to have my next cpu last as long as possible. If there are any recommendations on other CPUs that shouldn’t run much warmer than this one during load, feel free to let me know. Will do music production in FL Studio & 4k 3d rendering in After Effects

 

[Deleted member 2856582]

HDD have moving parts, CPUs don't.

 

[USAFRet]

No, CPU's don't wear out like that.

 

[OrlyP]

Don’t put this out of context but HDDs losing lifespan when unused is overrated. I have 20-30 year-old IDE drives in storage that still work to this day.

CPUs are solid state devices and they’ll go obsolete long before any measurable lifetime is used up, used or unused.

 

[thx1138v2]

I haven't seen any studies on that. My guess is that it depends on storage conditions, i.e. temperature variations that cause expansion and shrinkage, which is minnimal but still there.

There's also shielding to consider. There are billions of neutinos passing through every square centimeter of materials on earth every minute. They rarely interact with matter but "rarely" is not "never" and at the scales that circuits on a CPU are being built these days I suspect they wouldn't have to interact but rarly to do significant damage.

So temperature control, shielding, and duration would be the primary concerns. These are the same problems that long term data storage run into. You might research that.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
CPUs are solid state devices and they’ll go obsolete long before any measurable lifetime is used up, used or unused.

I actually think that's the true measure of a CPU's lifespan: how long until it's performance is made irrelevant and obsoleted by new technology. In that sense it's lifespan is very much used up sitting on the shelf, and rapidly.

 

[USAFRet]

I’m thinking of getting the i9-9900k before stores will stop selling it but might have it stored untouched in the box for 6-18 months. According to some sources, hard drives seem to lose lifespan if they are left unused, is this a similar thing with CPUs?
I’m looking to have my next cpu last as long as possible. If there are any recommendations on other CPUs that shouldn’t run much warmer than this one during load, feel free to let me know. Will do music production in FL Studio & 4k 3d rendering in After Effects

Why buy a device that is not going to be used until mid-2022?
WHy not buy whatever is current at that time?

 

[Deleted member 2808222]

Why buy a device that is not going to be used until mid-2022?
WHy not buy whatever is current at that time?

Well, I thought the price was good for that chip but I’ve been looking at the AMD Ryzen 9 5950x, I might get that one or one of AMDs chips that’ll come in the future instead due to the decreased single thread performance with intels chips https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

[drea.drechsler]

Well, I thought the price was good for that chip...

Then put it to use as soon as you get it.

But for the work you sketched out earlier (music production in FL Studio & 4k 3d rendering in After Effects) it seems to me multi-thread performance with a lot of cores is more desireable. Looking at single thread performance alone is misleading but the 5950X is probably a better choice because of it's 16 cores/32 threads. It just happens to have the better IPC, and therefore single thread performance, right now. And put it to use right away as technology marches ever forward.