OC damaging hardware

[purplepots]

I'm kinda new to overclocking so I have a couple questions:

What exactly damages the hardware in your computer from overclocking: increasing frequencies, increasing the voltage, the resulting heat from increased voltage, or just heat in general...?

If heat wasn't a problem, then would increasing voltages still be damaging?

I read something about locking the PCI/AGP to prevent
damaging it when overclocking... could someone explain this?

Thx for your guys' help!

[L337 M33P]

There are risks when overclocking, just like when you take a walk down the street. How big a risk you take depends on how far you go.

Vanilla overclocking is simply raising the clock frequency of a component - worst that could happen in this case is a crash and possibly data corruption on the hard drive. PCI locks were built into motherboards because IDE controllers and sound cards don't like bing overclocked. The PCI lock allows independent adjustment of the FSB, which is the more significant clock pulse as it controls the speed of the NB, processor and RAM.

Increasing the voltage using built-in adjustment will probably only reduce the life of a component by a few years if reasonable limits are kept - say 1.8V for an Athlon XP CPU, 1.55V for a Pentium 4. The increase in voltage will accelerate electron migration but this process is so slow it isn't a main cause of chip death.

Heat is probably what kills chips the most and becomes a problem when you increase the voltage or speed of the chip. High core voltages are more acceptable when the chip in question is supercooled.

[qualhiveldorf]

With a good heatsink, lots of airflow and a high temp alarm; the life of your components won't take a dramatic downturn. Plus as an overclocker you will probably upgrade before your cpu dies of natural causes.

[Como]

there is always a kill point for Vcore...if you put your vcore high enough, no matter what your temps it will eventuall pop at high enough core.

oter than that, the temps kill....if you have a pci/agp lock, then you shouldnt have any problems other than temp...unless you are using sub 0 temps on some sort of crazy setup, then your temps will be fine and your vcore would be your worry. Keep it under 50C and you should be fine. (50C is athlons, p4's may be lower)

[Mr.Radar]

Even though AMD chips are rated to 85*C max (not sure about P4's), you start seeing errors and lockups at around 60*C. To test your CPU for stability after you overclock you should use Prime95 (http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm) for at least 2 hours (most people run it for 24 hours or more).