Life Expectancy of a stable overclock

[ravenjedmanicdao]

Hello, I'm new to Tom's Hardware, if this is in the wrong section, I'm sorry. Anyways, I have a GT 730 with 2GB GDDR3 on a 64 bit from EVGA, it's quite fairly new, a couple of days old. I have set both core and memory clocks 220mhz above the normal clock, and so far the voltage usage is stable at 1.0600, 63c hot. All of that at full load.

I have been wondering for a very long time now...

Even with the most stable overclocks, does it still shorten the lifespan of the GPU?

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

There's a common misconception that overclocking degrades the lifespan of components. Overclocking doesn't do that, but the related and unmanaged increase in heat does. In other words, if the component is kept cool, it will last just as long as one that hadn't been overclocked.

The GT 730 has a maximum temperature of 98 C, so you've nothing to worry about.

 

[ravenjedmanicdao]

There's a common misconception that overclocking degrades the lifespan of components. Overclocking doesn't do that, but the related and unmanaged increase in heat does. In other words, if the component is kept cool, it will last just as long as one that hadn't been overclocked.

The GT 730 has a maximum temperature of 98 C, so you've nothing to worry about.

But how about the voltage? I can't control the voltage, it's all controlled by the GPU itself, would it be smart enough to know its limits of safe voltages?

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

Increasing voltage leads to increased heat.

It's possible to unlock voltage control with certain overclocking tools (MSI Afterburner for example) but I've not done it myself. When it comes to GPUs, I leave the voltage alone.

 

[amtseung]

Voltage will degrade electronics over time, regardless of temperature. This process, however, takes such a long time, other things will have killed your components long before then, like the itch to upgrade.