Intel Kills Extended Warranty Program for Overclocking

[_larry]

Apparently they could if they wanted to, according to Ian from Anandtech, Intel CPUs have "fuse bits" that trigger if the CPU goes beyond some limit.
To be honest I feel that OC is kinda dead, the CPUs push themselves quite well, there is almost nothing left, gone are the days when we could really push the CPUs. If memory serves, I had an e4300 at 1.8ghz that could easily reach 3.0ghz.

I was literally thinking this while reading it.
My Ryzen 1600x literally gives me maybe 2fps more in games if I manually overclock it to 4ghz from the stock 3.6ghz (it will push the most utilized cores higher than 3.6ghz when needed anyway). The only real benefit is for synthetic benchmark scores and encoding..and making it hotter for cold winter days lol.

 

[Solaris17]

I've killed several, but usually within the first few months, or OC degrades over time, usually for me, after pushing memory OC. But yes, it is rare since stability testing guides are so prevalent, and how people OC is fairly standard and protected by board BIOSes too.

I bought it for my 7980XE and destroyed my...shit idr 7640x (pushing close to 5ghz on way way way to much voltage)?

They asked me to run the intel processor diagnostic tool, it failed and they gave me a label like the next day.

TBH Intel has easily the best direct RMA experience I have ever dealt with.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I think Intel might have ulterior motives for cancelling this program, wait and see what develops.

I think you’re right. I don’t think they are all that fond of overclocking, and expect to see this feature disappear eventually. They may provide a tool right now, but I bet they feel like if you bork your cpu it’s on you (I agree, it’s a personal risk you take) and don’t want to be on the hook for a new one.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Nooooooooo, you mean my Ivy Bridge 3570K isn't covered anymore. Not sure I can go on anymore.

 

[1d10t]

The way I see it, none actually take advantage of it, there's little to none justification paying $29 over choosing Auto Overclocking in BIOS.

 

[hat]

I think you’re right. I don’t think they are all that fond of overclocking, and expect to see this feature disappear eventually. They may provide a tool right now, but I bet they feel like if you bork your cpu it’s on you (I agree, it’s a personal risk you take) and don’t want to be on the hook for a new one.

I'm not sure why they do what they do. I keep hearing we're a tiny fraction of the market, yet they go out of their way to make it impossible to overclock unless you pay big bucks for the hardware they still allow us to do it on. You would think that a behemoth like Intel wouldn't care very much about putting the effort in to squeeze such a small portion of the market, and yet here we are...

 

[Diverge]

Apparently they could if they wanted to, according to Ian from Anandtech, Intel CPUs have "fuse bits" that trigger if the CPU goes beyond some limit.
To be honest I feel that OC is kinda dead, the CPUs push themselves quite well, there is almost nothing left, gone are the days when we could really push the CPUs. If memory serves, I had an e4300 at 1.8ghz that could easily reach 3.0ghz.

What you said pretty much. They aren't leaving much overhead to work with anymore. They can keep power numbers down for marketing purposes, and just have various power levels...

 

[fullinfusion]

This program was good, but I don't know very many people have ever used it. I have spoken to only a true handful of people over the years other than myself that used it, and I tried to get people to buy it all the time. Maybe if I stuck at pushing it it would have stuck.

Push all you want, but we all know whats what

You don't do memory reviews anymore so why should we even think of you?

I call it a wash out IMHO! A.... eh haz been!

At least we get honest reviews now and not BS hyped up reviews.

A spade is still a spade

 

[FreedomEclipse]

tbh it was a bit of a controversial idea to begin with... Who really buys a K suffix CPU if they dont plan to overclock immediately or later on down the line? K CPUs also tend to cost more then non-k counterparts so you could say that customers were already paying that "overclocking tax". They could have easily extended the warranty for all K series CPUs of starting from Haswell at a snap of a finger but of course they want more money.

 

[Hardware Geek]

I've been overclocking CPUs since I had my old 486DX 66MHz running at 100MHz by using a heatsink with a fan and changing the jumpers in my motherboard, that was back in the early 90s, in my anecdotal experience, and through dozens of CPUs spread over almost 30 years of OCing every single processor I ever got my hands on, I have never killed a single CPU.

I've seen performance degradation over time, probably due to electro migration but other than that, I think every single CPU I've overclocked would still run today. Heck I still have my trusty i7 2600K running at 4.5GHz in an emulation dedicated box in my house, in it's heyday that processor hit 5GHz at insane voltages while under water cooling, but now it's running at a much lower OC, I got that processor over 10 years ago and it's still chugging along!

The point I'm trying to make is, it would take some extreme OCing to kill a CPU, at least in my experience, idk the statistics, like Dave mentioned, the program probably wasn't even used that much.

That might be part of the reason Intel killed the program, but only someone with inside knowledge of the real numbers being this program, would be able to give us an answer.

That's all I can add from my own experience, anyone here ever made use of this program? I'm curious.

I've been at it about the same about of time and personally I've never fried a processor either. I've had plenty fail stability testing or refuse to post, but never actually killed one I can think of. I have an old k6 kicking around somewhere and now have an urge to find out just how far that suckered will go before completely dying.

 

[redrios]

Seeing how Intel was able to claw back market share lately since AMD's stock was in a horrific state, idk how much truth there is in this statement.
Surely, if AMD's stock was better, Intel would not be in a better state.

also, sorry for coming from the past, I don't also over the relation of a little or a lot of demand for a service with its profit, they're saying it as if it's not even the worth of the waste and ink or LCD energy poured into paper and displays... I always assumed insurance was one of those very low risk low rewards investment thingy to like have (safer than banking), what do I know, and even if, maybe they don't want to have broken windows as in a clean neighborhood, not cheap fixes like OC warranty, so next time they mess up and want a quick safe they pull that trigger (break a few windows).