CHIP DEATH

[Johan45]

Hi all,
I have been pondering for some time the effects of heat and overvolting on AMD chips. Have read various articles over the years on topics like electromigration, NBTI ( negative bias thermal instability) etc. But I'm looking for some real world input.
Any time I get a new chip I have to see just how much I can get out of it with the hardware I've chosen but in the end settle for a medium OC. I like to keep the volts down when possibe for 24/7 usage. As an example I've had a X2 3800+ @2.7 , an X4 9850 @ 2.8 and an X4 965 @ 3.8.
I have only ever toasted one chip it was an old thoroughbred and that was dumb luck. It got jostled around in a move and the H/S was knocked loose. It lasted about 3 seconds after I flipped the switch. Never forgot the smell.
I have noticed that some of the posters here will run high voltages day to day and I'm curious if anyone has ever had a chip just up and die after time because of that.
Any horror stories would be welcome as well.

 

[legendary]

I had a very overclockable AMD "Thunderbird" Socket A CPU a couple of years ago. I forgot to plug in the fan on the heatsink and the rest was history. Powered up 1 second and powered off with an awful burning smell. An expensive lesson to learn at the time.

 

[Dlaw]

Dang, 1 second? I wouldn't think it would be that quick.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Friend was working on his PC Athlon XP 1800+ or 2000+ (I forget )and HS fell off, before it hit the bottom of the case, socket melted and cpu fried.

 

[juane414]

Wow... My old Athlon XP always shut down when I reached the temperature threshold. That thing overheated repeatedly before I cleaned the dust out of the stock fan and applied AS5 to it. Never burned out. Thing still ran when I trashed it.

 

[Johan45]

Good stories guys. I'm still looking for the long term effects of high volts. Wondered if anyone has had a chip die prematurely because of OC'ing.

 

[EarthDog]

Its impossible to tell, its not like the color smoke it gives off when going boom can tell you, ya know?

Its a fact that overclocking will shorten the life of the CPU. Some have had Chip A @ 5Ghz @ 1.5v for years and its still going strong, others have had the same chip with less clocks and volts go down quickly.

What Im saying is, there isnt a black and white answer here.

 

[Johan45]

I didn't expect anything solid EarthDog. Mostly curiosity. Deep down I do believe it's more dependant on the chip. For instance The 8350 I have now seems to be alot hungrier than others I see on this forum. I didn't get the best chip in the bin and its definately a leaker. I found that one module seems to be alot weaker than the others and it wouldn't surprise me if this one actually fails at some point.