Q6600 - overclocking vs component life

[aesmith]

Hi,

I never meant to get into overclocking, but couldn't resist having a dabble. Now I'm running the Q6600 at 360 x 9, with manually set Vcore of 1.2250v. Core temps go up to 52 Deg C after 1/2 hour or so of Prime95.

My question. How hard can you push a CPU like the Q6600 before you'd be starting to shorten its working life appreciably? Or the life of relate components like the various bits of chipset on the motherboard that are now working a bit harder than designed.

I'm assuming that every increase in voltage and/or temperature has a potential impact on reliability or life, but maybe there's a point at which that starts to have a more and more serious effect. Or maybe up to a certain point it doesn't have an effect. I don't know. Hopefully people will chip in to report that they've run reliably for years so long as you stick below xx volts, or xx degrees.

I was never trying to break speed limits with this rig, just wanting to get a bit more oomph for my cash, and as far as I can see that overclock from 266-360MHz now runs perfectly stable and reasonable cool.

Thanks in advance, Tony S

 

[aesmith]

Hmm. Edit doesn't seem to work. I should have included the following ...

Motherboard is Asus P5Q Pro, and the CPU is a G0 SLACR

 

[Zorg]

Your temps and voltage are good, assuming you are talking about Prime95 small FFTs. No one really knows how much life you take off as you go higher. Keep the voltage and temps down and you will probably be OK.

You might try running your multi at 8 and run the RAM 1:1 3.2G @400 x 8 and RAM at 400 (800 effective). I don't think it makes that much difference really.