Amnesia

I’m afraid the memory survey is a disappointment, less than twenty responses. Thanks to all those who did answer.

The response is so much lower than what I normally get on one of these questionaires that that’s the message: relatively few people are doing this.

We can probably make a couple other comments, though.

Not Suicide, More Like Russian Roulette

Pumping the voltage up to the neighborhood of 3V isn’t quite like jumping off a skyscraper. Not even like injecting yourself with Ebola.

It’s more like playing Russian Roulette. You’ll either be perfectly fine, or perfectly not.

Most people have managed to last several months, a few six months or longer at such voltages.

However, about 15% of the time, those who answered said the patient died. Just like the guy playing the Russian roulette wheel.

I would not take that 15% figure as etched in stone or even sand. The sample is just too small, and most people only ran at that speed for about two months. What you should take from this is that while it’s not suicidal, it’s certainly not something you do if you can’t afford to lose it. What you should NOT take from that is that there’s only one bullet in the chamber. There may be two or three. In the long term, maybe more. You can pretty safely assume there isn’t six, but that’s little consolation if the stick you use happens to be loaded.

Unlike that Russian wheel, though, sometimes it gives you some warning about it. We had instances where memory started getting Alzheimer’s, people pulled back. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t. Others just died without warning. One stick turned into a power addict, it just demanded more and more to give its owner the same high. 🙂

I can’t say which brands are better or worse, too few responses.

The Pros and the Wannabes

There are people who treat overclocking as a sport. Their mission is to simply to speed up a computer enough and get it stable enough long enough to get the highest possible score in whatever benchmark.

This has little to do with building and keeping what most would call a functioning computer system.

But there’s nothing wrong with treating overclocking as a sport. It’s like mountaineering. Those who want to climb the toughest mountains know they have to be prepared and take big risks and sometimes no matter what they do, if they get a bad break, they’ll pay for it with their lives.

It’s the same way with extreme overclockers, with the rather huge difference that their silicon and (maybe) their wallets are taking the risks, not anything nearer or dearer to them. To them, blowing up equipment is part of the game. To them, I must sound like the biggest nagging nanny stating the obvious all the time, and to them, I am.

But the vast, vast majority of overclockers aren’t like that. A majority basically take what the components will give them for free or close to it. Nothing wrong with that, lots of people enjoy rockclimbing.

While most are reasonable, even conservative, in their tinkerings, it’s the wannabes who can be dangerous with this kind of option. I see them all the time in various forums.

I call a wannabe a “No Guts, All Glory” type of guy. He not only wants something for nothing, he wants a lot for his. Like the pros, he wants high scores. Unlike the pros, he’s not willing to pay the price to get them.

Unfortunately, increasing voltage is one of those “free or close to it” features.

Need I even continue?

This is risky. Not suicidal, not safe, risky. If you accept the risk and are willing and able to pay the price if things go bad, fine by me. I’m not your CPU’s or RAM stick’s momma. It’s your money. Have fun.

If this is a game too risky for you to play, that’s fine, too. None of this is worth losing sleep over.

What’s not fine is trying to have it both ways. You want to play, be ready to pay. If you can’t pay, don’t play and try to make the rest of us pay through your RMAs. 🙂

Ed