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Will overclocking damage anything other than the CPU?

Yes depending on the fsb setting which affect the pci and agp and by that the HD and memory as well as your sound-card, nic-card and so forth.

AoD
 
I don't think i've ever heard of anything actually getting damaged, but odd fsb's do have a slight tendency to corrupt hard drives.

bart
 
I have temporarily damaged some cheap ram. It refused to post afterward until i put it in a different system for a single boot.
 
Ya, it can affect the PCI, and the AGP slot, if you overclock through the FSB, which is how you overclock Intel chips. But, with the AMD chips, which you overclock through the multiplier, you only stand a chance of burning out the processor, so get some good cooling devices, and use artic silver for thermal grease, that's worked the best for me. Plus if you have some really horrible RAM, I mean really bad, you can damage that too. But it's probably not that bad, unless it's something along the lines of Packard Bell.
 
Depending on what hardware you have, and what methods of overclocking you use, there is a possibility of damage for nearly each component of your computer system (inside the case).

Your CPU can be affected most easily because that is usually the target of the overclock. But it's not limited to the CPU, you can severely damage everything on your PCI and/or AGP bus, as well as your system memory (RAM).

If you have a motherboard such as the FIC VA-503+ (using this as example because it's what I have), you can have your memory settings seperate from your CPU settings. For example, you can have PC66 SDRAM, running as PC66, while having a 100MHz-FSB CPU running at 100MHZ FSB.

However, my understanding is that alot (if not, most) motherboards don't have this feature, and thus by selecting a higher frontside bus speed, you also increase the operating frequency of the memory, in effect overclocking the memory as well as the CPU, video card, hard drive and anything on the PCI/AGP bus (if you use an odd FSB, which would offset the PCI or AGP frequencies).

"Such as memory or hds?"

I've smelt RAM melt, and I've messed up a Seagate hard drive. I highly doubt it is just coincidence that I happened to be overclocking to 75/83/95/112/124MHz bus speeds. I believe at 112MHz, the PCI frequency is set to approximately 41MHz, the default being 33MHz. That's quite an increase, but for video cards that do not handle overclocking well (I'm sure some fellow AnandTechers would be happy to provide some examples) they may not make it (they'll crap out).

While I was operating at higher FSB settings (too high), I had many blue screens, random reboots and lockups. You don't want this to happen. It can also seriously damage your hard drive, depending on the quality - I wouldn't risk it.

Hope I've helped at all if any.

If I've confused you in any way, please feel free to PM (private message) me and I'd be glad to try to clear it up. The reason being for this is that I may not check back to this thread, and if you want me to clarify anything, it would be best to use that feature (I don't check back everywhere because I'm on a relatively sluggish connection).

Good night,

-RSI
 
It's also been known to loosen paint on the side of your house, make your dog's hair stand on end, as well as cause sterility in males, due to the extreme magnetic field caused by having 52 fans blowing in your case 🙂 Sorry- gotta have a smartass in every thread!
 
Under extreme cases you could literally fry something, create a short, and fry everything in your system. I have not met anyone this has happened to and most of my friends and I overclock. I have not seen any such thing occur on this forum, but I'm pretty sure it's at least possible. You would probably need to try something truly stupid to do it, like put 2.2V through a 1.65V processor. My guess is that this would not occur unless you start pushing voltages too far out of spec.

In most cases you risk damage only to the components you are overclocking. If you overclock your processor by adjusting the multiplier, you generally only risk your processor. If you overclock your AGP bus, you risk your AGP video card. If you overclock your PCI bus you risk all your PCI cards. If you overclock your memory you risk that too. You can overclock the FSB with out overclocking the AGP/PCI/memory, for example overclocking a Celeron which normally runs at 66Mhz, to 100Mhz keeps everything within spec other than the processor. Overclocking a P3 from 100Mhz to 133Mhz, keeps everything other than the processor in spec. Most P3s can't overclock that far, but some cB0 owners have pulled it off. I have heard of some P3 600Mhz owners getting their processor up to 900Mhz doing this. If you have an Apollo Pro board you can overclock the FSB and then underclock the memory by adjusting the System/SDRAM ratio.
 
Anyone plan to tell me why my A7V refuses to boot at 133Mhz FSB even though i've changed my multiplier to 7x? My CPU works with no problems at 1Ghz. It wouldn't even post if i increase the FSB from 100Mhz to 101Mhz.
 
I have killed a HD by using a 41.5Mhz PCI bus, it actually was smoking. It was a Fujitsu 6.4GB 5400rpm, that was about 2 years ago with my old K6-2, i loved that unlocked chip, i wish intel had unlocked chips.
 
That's not quite accurate Yucky- it's not the processor that's can't cope, it is the chipset of the mobo. 110 mhz is also somewhat low, many people can run at 115-119 mhz (or even up to 133 mhz in rare cases). Asus A7v and k7v are not the best fsb overclockers though. 🙁
 
I've got a K7M/Tbird 800 running at 115MHz. No problems yet....as far as I know this isn't a potentially dangerous speed.....is it?
 
I have my Duron650@750 at the default voltage(no problems). I used the Optimum SDRAM Settings from [L]http://go.to/kt7faq[/L] everything works fine and my benchmarks are greatly improved, est. the memory. I'm new to overclocking and this is a system that I just built, so do I need to worry. I just don't want to have to purchase new hardware in the recent future.

Abit KT7
Duron650@750
ALPHA 6035
pc133 128mb Crucial
Voodoo3 3000 AGP
SB Live Value
Quantum 15gig Firball

 
Hmm, i'm thinking of storing up on another Duron 700Mh cause i'm thinking of getting DDR and dual cpu mb on new year.
 
i have never overclocked an dmy new PC would be coming in pretty soon that is the parts that i have ordered from here and there...it is a p3 550e Asus P3V4X 128 mb PC 133 Cas 2 15 GB quantum fireball plus 7200 rpm ...so i was wondering after reading all the posts at what point should i stop increasing the FSB ...well i have done some research and i will use the BIOS settings to increase the motherboard FSB ...but will that effect my geForce2 .....r the above specifications good for overclocking ...i mean i hope i haven't bought something that is vulnerable to overclocking risking frying
 
A friend's MSI's KT133 Socket-A mobo, cheap PC133 and a Duron 600 does a nice fsb overclock. Does 115MHz FSB.

🙂
 
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