Does Overclocking Reduce CPU Lifespan?
PC users have a love-hate relationship with CPU overclocking. On one end, they love the idea of extracting every bit of juice from their computer’s power, but on the other hand, it raises some lifespan questions, too.
It’s been long believed that overclocking the CPU damages it and reduces its lifespan. If you’re one of those, stuck in the dilemma of whether you should overclock your CPU or not, this article is for you.
In this post, we will dive deeper into the subject and find out if overclocking does any harm to your CPU.
Does overclocking CPU reduce lifespan?
The technical answer is “Yes” — but the logical answer is “No”.
You see, overclocking your CPU produces more heat, and heat is the dire enemy of a CPU’s lifespan. However, as long as you don’t surpass a certain safe limit of temperature, the effect on your CPU’s lifespan is going to be negligible. By the time the CPU dies, it will be obsolete anyway. It’s recommended that you don’t overclock so much that CPU temperature rises above 85 degrees Celcius. If it’s going higher than that, you should underclock it as soon as possible.
Another metric to keep in mind is the voltage. You don’t want to go higher than a top limit of 1.4 volts. If you go higher than, your CPU will be prone to damage and severely-reduced lifespan.
As long as you stay under the same limits of temperature and voltage, your CPU’s lifespan won’t reduce noticeably. But if you ignore the warnings and go beyond the safe limits, reduced lifespan, along with shuttering performance and risk of instant damage, is imminent. A modern CPU can last you as much as 10 years. If you’re someone who likes to use their hardware till it’s dead, overclocking will reduce your CPU’s lifetime.
However, if you’re a heavy user, possibly a gamer or professional editor, you would upgrade your CPU in the next few years anyway. So, even if your CPU’s lifespan reduces from 10 years to 8 years due to overclocking, it won’t matter to you.
Why overclock CPU?
Now that you know CPU overlooking is safe when done within limits, here are the top benefits you get from it.
CPU performance boost
The most obvious reason someone would overclock their CPU is to get more performance out of it. The clock speed of your processor determines how fast it can process information. That means a CPU with a faster clock speed is able to complete a processing task faster. By overclocking your CPU, you can overcome the maximum clock speed set by your CPU’s manufacturer, letting you extract more performance from it than usual. The gain in CPU performance comes in handy in many situations. For instance, if you’re playing a graphically intensive game and have a powerful GPU, sudden shutters or frame drops may mean your CPU is bottlenecking the system. By overclocking the CPU, you can essentially overcome the bottleneck and gain smoother results.
Future-proofing for newer software
Even if your CPU is fast enough for the most demanding games and most power-hungry tools today, it won’t stay like that forever. A few years down the line, developers will come up with new pieces of software and games that require a higher amount of CPU performance. Even if you don’t need to overclock now, you can do it later when your computer starts falling short of the system requirements of new games or pieces of software.
Cooling isn’t as tricky as it once was
The higher the clock speed your CPU runs at, the more heat it will generate. However, with the vast majority of affordable cooling solutions out there today, it’s not a tough job keeping your overclocked CPU under safe limits. That said, we still don’t recommend overclocking outside the same limits mentioned earlier. Couple your cooling system with a high-quality thermal paste, like KOLD-01 from Kooling Monster, and you won’t have trouble keeping your CPU under a safe temperature limit.
Risk of overclocking
That said, overclocking is not all fun and games — you might have to face a few risks here and there, especially if you aren’t careful with what you do. Even though overclocking modern CPUs is relatively easier, you should still keep the risks into consideration.
If you overclock your CPU and it crosses the 85-degrees-Celcius mark for extensive periods, your CPU’s long-term lifespan will definitely be reduced. It would be especially noticeable if you plan to keep the computer for as long as it’s functional. Furthermore, if you overdo your overclocking and your CPU touches the 105-degrees-Celcius mark, it will most probably die instantly. However, most computers shut down automatically before reaching that point. (Learn more about How to check CPU temperature and why is it important?)
Overdoing the voltage is a potential problem, too. If you exceed the safe voltage limit, you might end up frying your chip, killing it in the process.
What you should avoid when overclocking
While deciding to overclock, conduct extensive research on how much you should overclock your hardware. Be noted that each CPU might have a different safe limit for overclocking. Even though the max voltage limit we mentioned is 1.4V, your specific CPU may not even be suitable with 1.3V. The best strategy is to go online and read different forums on what people with your hardware are doing.
Another thing to keep in mind is the performance of the rest of your hardware components. Overclocking the CPU won’t do you any good if other hardware components are bottlenecking the system. For instance, if your GPU isn’t fast enough to run a new AAA gaming title on 60 frames, you won’t be able to achieve this performance even after overclocking your CPU.
Simply put, all of your hardware components have to be powerful enough to make use of the overclocked CPU performance.
The bottom line
All in all, overclocking the CPU doesn’t put any noticeable impact on your PC’s performance, provided you aren’t exceeding the safe limits of voltage and temperature. The best strategy is to get a proper cooling system, as well as use a high-quality thermal paste, like Kooling Monster’s KOLD-01, to maximize heat conduction.