[SOLVED] Does increasing CPU voltage reduce lifespan?

[Penrose]

The title is a pretty common question, but in my case, I have an R5 2600 and was using the Ryzen Master Utility to overclock it. I increased it to 4GHz and increased the voltage to 1.4v. I then clicked "Apply and Test" via the Ryzen Master utility and it was successful. The temp went to about 69 during the test but no higher. I soon figured that I could lower the voltage to 1.3v so I did so and tested it again. I soon realized that I didn't need to overclock the CPU as I was getting enough performance out of it anyways, so I reset to stock settings and uninstalled Ryzen Master as I heard it is also not a very good overclocking software. (Better to OC via BIOS), I'm just worried that I may have reduced the lifespan of my CPU and affected it's performance while I was overclocking it. I never actually played any games with the OC, I simply set the overclock via Ryzen Master, tested it and that was all I did with the overclock. So have I damaged or slowed down my CPU by doing that? Or will the CPU be unaffected and work like it should at stock settings?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Increased voltage won't harm your cpu if you keep it within a safe amount and you keep your cpu cool under 80c.
1.4v and 1.3v is safe for ryzen as long as temps are good.

You did no damage. Your voltage and temparature was safe and your cpu was idle.
Ryzen master is fine to oc aswell.

 

[DMAN999]

Your CPU will be fine.
1.4v is high but not high enough to reduce the life span of your CPU.
AMD stated that 1.4v is the max safe voltage to ensure you don't degrade your CPU.
I have my Ryzen 5 2600 OC'd to 4 GHz at 1.32v and it sometimes goes up to 1.33v under load. I could possibly get it down a bit lower but since it is 100% stable with the current settings I have not bothered.
I do use the Ryzen Balanced Power Plan so it does downclock to 1.55 GHz which helps with power consumption.

 

[InvalidError]

One little detail about modern CPUs is that the motherboard 'core' voltage isn't the actual core voltage. Due to how sensitive smaller transistors are to noise, the CPU has on-chip linear regulators that take the noisy board voltage and drop the last 50-200mV to the cleaner final core voltage. By increasing "core" voltage, you are increasing the amount of headroom local linear regulators within the chip have to work with and also the amount of power they are wasting in the process, which is in turn a large part of why TDP tends to fly out the window when doing more than mild overclocking.

 

[Karadjgne]

Higher than stock clocks don't always need higher voltages. Both amd and Intel set stock clocks considerably higher than what's actually needed for 1 reason. Guaranteed speed. No 2 cpus are the same. Every single cpu is different. With that in mind, amd/intel need to guarantee a stable cpu right out of the box. So they set voltages high to cover any and all possible needs by every cpu.

Stock boost on my i5 is 3.8GHz. Stock voltage is set at 1.25v. My OC is 4.3GHz, at 1.108v.

And please don't make drastic changes. 1.4v on your Ryzen is high, but within tolerances. When dropping voltages, it should be done in 0.005v - 0.01v (roughly) increments, not a full 0.1v drop. And test with Asus RealBench in between. You'd be looking at it as 1.400v dropping to 1.392v etc, and then on down. You might even hit 1.276v before instability, then a bump back up to 1.284v to get your lowest stable voltage, which in turn leaves the lowest load temp. Cpus are very sensitive to voltages, so a 1.400v drop to 1.300v drop is very big overall.

 

[Penrose]

Higher than stock clocks don't always need higher voltages. Both amd and Intel set stock clocks considerably higher than what's actually needed for 1 reason. Guaranteed speed. No 2 cpus are the same. Every single cpu is different. With that in mind, amd/intel need to guarantee a stable cpu right out of the box. So they set voltages high to cover any and all possible needs by every cpu.

Stock boost on my i5 is 3.8GHz. Stock voltage is set at 1.25v. My OC is 4.3GHz, at 1.108v.

And please don't make drastic changes. 1.4v on your Ryzen is high, but within tolerances. When dropping voltages, it should be done in 0.005v - 0.01v (roughly) increments, not a full 0.1v drop. And test with Asus RealBench in between. You'd be looking at it as 1.400v dropping to 1.392v etc, and then on down. You might even hit 1.276v before instability, then a bump back up to 1.284v to get your lowest stable voltage, which in turn leaves the lowest load temp. Cpus are very sensitive to voltages, so a 1.400v drop to 1.300v drop is very big overall.

I literally ran a test via Ryzen Master at 1.4v and 4.0 GHz and then reverted it straight after, that would hardly do anything bad to my CPU?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

It wouldnt hurt anything.

 

[CountMike]

Just keep it cool and no voltage will hurt modern CPUs. They all have safeties built in and together with BIOS limits it will not let you set any foolishly high voltages unless you know how to override them.
If you want to play with OC, main rule is "Cool first, OC later".

 

[Karadjgne]

Not gonna hurt at all. Just that that's a drastic voltage drop. You see it as only 1.4v to 1.3v, not a big drop at all, it's only 0.1v. But to a cpu, that's almost a 10% drop in available power. It can put you right into an unstable cpu.