What exactly will cause the CPU to "blow up"?

[eLiu]

What kinds of temps, or settings, or whatnot will cause the CPU to die on me?

(im deathly afraid of killing the CPU when I OC it...hehe...not that i dont trust myself, it's that i dont have another 120 bucks to burn)

-eric

 

[CTho9305]

depends - tbird? duron? pIII? celery?

AMD's are supposed to work at up to 90C, but its not good to be above 60C

 

[BurntKooshie]

The main reason why it's not good to go "over 60C" is because the thermisters are both innaccurate, and imprecise.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

What exactly will cause the CPU to "blow up"?

I've had good luck with M88's, but a 1/4 stick of dynamite works a lot better.

 

[eLiu]

LoL star

i meant a tbird...sorry about that

yea...ill try to stay below 55C...i dont wanna nuke my poor thunderchicken...another 100 bucks just isnt in the bank

Will anything else besides temps blow the CPU? (besides like cracking the die w/a heatsink or something like that...i wont call it idiotic just yet, cuz there's no assurance i wont do it )

 

[PullMyFinger]

ST4RCUTTER,
You beat me to it. I was going to suggest some special C4 thermal compound.

eLiu,
The other thing to consider when beating that CPU like a rented mule is the core voltage. If you increase the voltage too far over stock, then you risk frying the CPU. A good rule of thumb for increasing voltage is no more than 10-15% with out significantly improved cooling. Remember to increase your FSB and vcore in SMALL steps, the CPU, RAM, motherboard, etc will usually give you a sign when you have reach your overclocking limit. But push it too far too quickly and that sign could be smoke. BTW, Intel CPU's have a built in thermal protection circuit which shuts the processor off if it gets too hot, AMD does not include this circuit in their CPU's.

 

[HomerSapien]

Use some jumper cables on it..

 

[CarpetMan]

Is uping the core voltage not likely to hurt anything as long as the temp
stays within reason? What I mean is,as long as the temp does not go to high can you continue to up the core voltage?

 

[HomerSapien]

Take a few if not all of the resistors off the motherboard..

 

[PullMyFinger]

HomerSapien
LOL, you just want to see a picture of his molten CPU when he's done, don't you.

But seriously, eLiu and CarpetMan, the CPU temperature is directly driven by the vcore setting. When you up the vcore you cannot get away from raising the internal temperature of the CPU (down where the transistors live). You can negate some of this heating w/ better cooling but you quickly reach the point of diminishing returns. You can go w/ more exotic cooling like water or peltier but if these fail then your CPU will bail on you faster than Ted Kennedy after an auto accident. My advice is to stick to the 10-15% over stock voltage rule of thumb unless you want to play around w/ different fan/heatsink/cooling options. My 2c.

 

[CarpetMan]

Thanks PullMyFinger. Sounds like I better not try to go over 180 or 185 with my Duron