How safe is overclocking a CPU ?

[dudewotevr]

If you do your research properly and stick to the guidelines, there is virtually 0% chance of you damaging anything.

 

[nakedpeanut]

Thank you. You guys are really helpful.
I ran the IntelBurnTest and the thermal stability was still OK at 85 degrees ... I have a standard heatsink/fan that comes with the processor.
I then set the BCLK to 150MHz and am currently getting 3.150GHz with temp at 46 degrees ( via RealTemp).
I can see a marked performance in Photoshop CS5 64-bit already

Could you tell me what your voltages at both 166 and 150 are? Often the motherboards auto adjust the voltage. Which is nice, but not always accurate, since they tend to over volt the CPU, thus increasing the temperature.

It's often best to manually set the voltage yourself.You can try the forward or backward approach as i call it.

Forward
Manually set the voltage to the stock settings and increase the BLCK by about 5 then check for stability..
Continue till you find it unstable.
Then increase the voltage till it is stable.
Repeat till you hit desired BLCK

Backward
Set the BLCK to what you would like (within reason of course)
Reboot so the mobo can auto adjust the voltage.
Then try decrease the voltage by small amounts.
Check for stability.
If stable keep decreasing.
Once you find it unstable just revert the the previous voltage.


The forward is Safer but takes quite a while.
I usually just do it backwards.

 

[scotty777]

overclocking is usually safe, the CPU is built to withstand quite a lot of beating and thrashing . What I've found to be a little less forgiving is RAM, so try not push that too hard .

On a side note, I noticed with my old AMD 3200+, it had started to slow down more and more as time went by, so that's probably me owning it's transistors

 

[matshelane]

Could you tell me what your voltages at both 166 and 150 are? Often the motherboards auto adjust the voltage. Which is nice, but not always accurate, since they tend to over volt the CPU, thus increasing the temperature.

It's often best to manually set the voltage yourself.You can try the forward or backward approach as i call it.

Forward
Manually set the voltage to the stock settings and increase the BLCK by about 5 then check for stability..
Continue till you find it unstable.
Then increase the voltage till it is stable.
Repeat till you hit desired BLCK

Backward
Set the BLCK to what you would like (within reason of course)
Reboot so the mobo can auto adjust the voltage.
Then try decrease the voltage by small amounts.
Check for stability.
If stable keep decreasing.
Once you find it unstable just revert the the previous voltage.


The forward is Safer but takes quite a while.
I usually just do it backwards.

The voltage at 150 is 1.248V ... I haven't yet tried it on 166

 

[nakedpeanut]

I think you can decrease that a little and run a little cooler.

 

[matshelane]

I think you can decrease that a little and run a little cooler.

Thanks again.
I have taken it down to 1.121V and the temps are between 33-36