Intel Offers Protection Plan For Overclockers 101
MojoKid writes "Intel today unveiled a pilot program that provides warranty protection to overclockers in the event they get a little bit overzealous with pushing the pedal to the metal. For a fee, Intel will provide a one-time replacement of certain processors that are damaged by overclocking and/or over-volting. It's completely optional and in addition to the original three-year standard warranty that already applies to Intel's retail boxed processors. Intel isn't yet ready to flat-out endorse overclocking but the Santa Clara chip maker is perfectly content to provide a 'limited remedy if issues arise as a result of an enthusiast's decision to enable overclocking,' for a modest fee, of course. The deal applies only to certain Extreme Edition and K-series (unlocked) processors currently, in Intel's Core i7 and Core i5 families."
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People being paid to push a viewpoint can afford to haunt /. to make their owners point.
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you are posting AC to criticize posting AC?
YOUR head should asplode from the idiocy.
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Agreed. /.ers do not need to be handheld to see any bias from the mods: that's what the meta-mod system is for. If there is any bias, it will be accounted for and nuked.
However, these consistent first posts from Anonymous Cowards with off-topic discussions is a source of annoyance. Perhaps he thinks he is doing the rest of us a public service; he is not.
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I've seen way more of your bullshit than anti-microsoft bullshit.
Come to think of it though, I HAVE seen a great deal of PRO-Microsoft bullshit lately so perhaps he has a point.
Re:Why not for all CPUs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm offering you my middle finger. Am I a generous and good guy now?
That depends: do I get to keep it?
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Because the CPUs that are being overclocked may have defective microcode and the replacements may contain an updated design
Re:Why not for all CPUs? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not for all CPUs? (Score:5, Insightful)
The EE and K-series stuff is, shall we say, 'priced for the price insensitive'. Nothing wrong with that, voluntary on both sides, everybody knows that you can get 80-90% of the bang for less than half the buck by stepping back a few notches; but those parts are crazy overpriced. By contrast, their low end parts(especially in areas where they are going directly against AMD largely on basis of performance/$) aren't sold at a loss; but don't have nearly as much profit built in.
If they wanted to offer abuse insurance on value SKUs, and not lose money, the price would likely be a fair percentage of the OEM price of the CPU(very little margin on those parts, and only crazed overclockers would buy the insurance, so a high-risk pool and parts whose cost to intel is not so very different from their cost in store). Offering abuse insurance on the 'because we can' SKUs could be done at a much lower percentage of the OEM price of the CPU, because the cost to intel of that part is much lower than its price, and the entire market for those is crazed overclockers, so the additional riskiness implied by actually buying such insurance is not as great...
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But anyway, this is just a friendly banter. I'm not upset.
Jesus Christ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's a pleasant surprise that Intel is offering this option at all, and you're calling them assholes because they're not offering it for all CPU's? I bet you're also pissed that this optional protection plan isn't free either. You arrogant, entitled jackass.
My view is that the models that are being protected may have flawed microcode, For $35, the cost to Intel to replace, it is a good deal for both customer and Intel.
Usually all microprocessors (AMD, INTEL, other), have some instructions to fix defective instructions or add some new ones. If this space in the chip is exhausted, the faulty instruction may require code in the operating system's supervisor (kernel) to run in kernel mode. Much better to provide a corrected or improved processor.
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Because other CPUs are not unlocked and therefore not very good for overclocking.
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The unlocked chips are sold at a premium and are with a sold to the overclockers,
Personally I'm an AMD guy unless performance requirements justify the extra $ but I think it's excellent that Intel is extending real support to the overclockers, they are after all the "bleeding edge" of enthusiasts.
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Because, from Intel's POV, you're not supposed to overclock CPUs that they could not sell for more, despite being essentially the same silicon but just didn't pass all the tests well, so it had to be downstepped. It might work with OC, it might not, but in any case Intel would be very stupid (or you would be, depends) to offer that kind of protection for CPUs that are not the peak performers of their line. They have to sell you a chip that would rate at X GHz with Y cores for Z money if everything worked f
times change (Score:5, Interesting)
Never thought I'd see intel go for something like this, although I don't bother with overclocking these days.
from TFA, since the summary neglected it:
Processors in which you can purchase a Protection Plan include:
Intel Core i7 3960X: $35
Intel Core i7 3930K: $35
Intel Core i7 2700K: $25
Intel Core i7 2600K: $25
Intel Core i5 2500K: $20
Seems fairly affordable if you plan on burning one up, I suppose.
Re:times change (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's just a nice option to have and adds some goodwill towards Intel with next to no cost on their part (and potentially some profit) given the durability of their processors.
And for those rare few who do somehow destroy their CPU, it'll give them another one to use more cautiously.
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It's just a nice option to have and adds some goodwill towards Intel with next to no cost on their part (and potentially some profit) given the durability of their processors.
Sorry, but Intels are not "durable" processors. I managed to fry a DuoCore2 at 72 degrees in a laptop. This wasn't overclocked, but rather was crunching some serious Matlab. The fan was running at the time.
Contrast that with the Duron that I had up to 108 degrees because I forgot to reconnect the fan wire. I learned of the problem by _smell_. Not a scratch on the thing, it continued to run for at least two years after that. Now, that Duron I did assemble myself with Arctic Silver and the DuoCore was a stock
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Equally, I blew an Athalon XP back in the day just by seeing if the system would post after I installed the memory and CPU. However, I forgot the heatsink...
System was up all of 30 seconds, if that. Posted fine, got to the "no system disk" bios screen and everything.
However, on second boot, the bios informed me through the beeps of death that the CPU was dead, and that was that.
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Thou shalt not forget the heatsink on an AMD processor.
You committed a cardinal sin.
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Most likely it wasn't the processor that 'passed away'
Notebooks have several areas where excess heat can cause damage (especially on most cheap laptops today). At 72F? Not the processor
It's most likely a power source failure, or another area getting too hot and melting the solder
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Most likely it wasn't the processor that 'passed away'
Notebooks have several areas where excess heat can cause damage (especially on most cheap laptops today). At 72F? Not the processor
It's most likely a power source failure, or another area getting too hot and melting the solder
Thanks, I had not considered that. I have no idea where the motherboard on that thing came from.
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Makes some sense actually. This cost seems more likely to cover the actual cost of the processor (the die on the wafer). The $1000 that the enthusiast paid is more of a license and the processor is merely the media.
and they will change the socket or some stuff so y (Score:2)
and they will change the socket or some stuff so you have buy a new MB + maybe new ram as well.
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I don't suppose it covers motherboard damage due to something like the unreliable LGA socket fiasco a while ago. (A lot of the sockets were just good enough to work for a while at stock clocks but destroyed themselves and the processors quickly if you overclocked. I think there may still be motherboards for Sandy Bridge on sale with this problem actually.)
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I don't know why they're calling it a "protection plan", when it's really just "overclocking insurance". Everybody pays into the pool, and the people who get "injured" get payouts.
Does this even happen much? (Score:5, Informative)
How often do CPUs can fried by overclocking these days?
Modern CPUs have complicated temperature monitoring onboard that will throttle down the chip if it starts to overheat. Shouldn't this protect against 99% of possible damage scenarios?
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Yeah, throttling and whatnot should make it fairly impervious to heat effects, I would think. Over-volting on the other hand, not as much.
Re:Does this even happen much? (Score:5, Informative)
Overvolting, last I checked, was the only actual thing Intel won't warranty replace for. If you don't overvolt (outside specs, not outside 'standard' voltage -- on my i7 standard is ~1.20v and overvolting is >1.35v) and the processor dies, it'll be replaced whether it was overclocked or not. And you can get a huge bump on clock frequency on most processors without a single bit of extra voltage (in my case, >700MHz without touching voltages at all).
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It's an interesting topic.
What is considered a "safe" or "within specs" overvolting for i5 / i7 CPUs and how much of a frequency bump can one usually get from it?
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Look up the processor's voltage VID range -- it should be on the Intel spec sheets, such as the one for the i7-980X [intel.com]. In the case of that processor, anything between 0.800V and 1.375V is considered 'safe'.
As far as how high a boost in speed you can get out of a processor without changing the voltages, it depends on your specific chip and how close to overvolting you get. Most of the time you can get 1-1.5 GHz extra (sometimes more) out of the chip before overvolting it (rarely do any overclockers actually ov
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How often do CPUs can fried by overclocking these days?
I think your base are belong to us.
Buy insurance at your own risk...
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Yes they all come with Over volt, heat, surge protection these days.
However that is presuming those features actually work. Like any fab, they likely check a few, and the rest are assumed to be OK, which may or may not be the case. In addition, the usual suspect of CPU fail is heat. If your "protection" is also on chip, which is likely also susceptible to heat failure, you just hope that it doesn't fail "first". Also it may be that these protections only work a few times, and degrade the more stress you put
target audience: met! (Score:3)
Who are the folks buying high-end processors? Us! Ppl who know their OC business. This is no loss and all gain for Intel in a product category whose ability to differentiate is practically nil for the target savvy audience. Good on them for throwing us a worthwhile promotional bone.
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The high-end processors have unlocked dividers. Sure you can overclock the cheaper chips but that involves running everything at the faster speed. In the old days, that included your PCI and AGP busses, and it could mean that spi
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Dude, the Black Edition of AMD's CPUs can be overclocked to ridiculous speeds just with air cooling. With liquid cooling, even further.
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So $200 for a 2500K is overpriced? I've been out of the PC hardware game for a while, but a 4-core Sandy Bridge chip with an unlocked multiplier for $200 seems pretty awesome.
Yes, the highest-end CPUs are hella expensive, but that's always been the case - not many of those are sold anyway.
Why Overclock? (Score:3, Interesting)
With the performance of today's processors, I really don't see any reason to overclock beyond "my clocks are bigger then yours".
Overclocking is a great way to ruin perfectly good hardware that costs a pretty penny to begin with.
Undervolting, underclocking, that I can get behind. Less power consumed, less heat produced, lower energy bills.
When my cheap AMD Quad Core can handle HD Multimedia encoding in a decent length of time, why push it beyond it's capacity for a few seconds, minutes off of that time? For a production studeo, sure, but for a home user? get real.
Re:Why Overclock? (Score:4, Funny)
I agree with the sentiment, but the answer is mostly just because.
Why drive 80 in a 60? Why have double the bacon on that cheeseburger? Why is there a market for breast implants and 'male enhancement' pills? Why do billionares want more cash? Why do douchebags have trucks jacked up higher than the roof of my car?
Just because. MORE!
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I understand what you are saying. My take on overclocking these days is: more is less. Yeah, you may get a tiny performance increase, but your energy efficiency goes straight to hell, and your cooling solution gets more complex, expensive, and (usually) louder. Then factor in the extra electricity bills to feed the computer, and the AC bills in the summer. It seems better to spend the money on a better chip from the start then to try to push something beyond its specs to get the illusion of something f
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"your energy efficiency goes straight to hell, and your cooling solution gets more complex, expensive, and (usually) louder. Then factor in the extra electricity bills to feed the computer, and the AC bills in the summer."
So faster versions of the same chip don't use more power when they're sold as the faster version? Even though they're both rated at the same TDP, the 3.4GHz version of the chip might (and probably will) use [(3.4/3.2)-1]% more power than the 3.2GHz chip of the same type at full load.
Modern
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Why settle for less? With todays processors and their temperature sensors, that can throttle the clock if necessary, you cannot ruin your hardware.
About the benefits, I do like the tiny bit of snappiness when I use slashdot (and some of the JS heavy websites). You would see significant benefits for any single threaded task you perform. For encoding you might want to try overclocking your GPU and see the difference. I can guarantee it would be significant percentage increase, and not seconds.
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"When my cheap AMD Quad Core can handle HD Multimedia encoding in a decent length of time, why push it beyond it's capacity for a few seconds, minutes off of that time? For a production studeo, sure, but for a home user? get real."
When an encode takes 5 hours or longer, cutting that time by 30-40% is pretty awesome.
Yes, there is a limit that "normal" users should not go past (nice low temps if you're using the machine for something strongly CPU-limited.
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WTF? Slashdot ate my post (and no, the machine I'm posting from isn't overclocked :P). Last sentence was supposed to be:
Yes, there is a limit that "normal" users should not go past (nice low temps, no overvolting), but if you're using the machine for something strongly CPU-limited, not using that untapped potential is a waste.
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It makes a huge difference if you really need cycles. I'd need dual Opterons or Xeons for the equivalent compilation performance of my FX-8150 at 4.5GHz. That means $2k+ vs $250.
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Re:Sounds to me they are relying on fuses (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds to me they are relying on fuses (Score:5, Informative)
"Simply tear down the package and replace the micro fuses and install in a new package."
Would you like to know how I know you don't have experience in this field?
Chip lithography is very much a one-time thing. Once it's made, you aren't adding on anything else. Spare silicon is gone. If it breaks, you're screwed, get a new one or nothing at all, those are your only answers.
The only recycling likely to happen will be melting the package down to get the metals out, and Intel would leave that to a reclamation company. There would NEVER be a refurbishing plant made, I can almost guarantee you this, as it's cheaper and easier (plus more logistically sound) to make a new one.
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Well, technically you can repair some types of damage to the metal or add new connections (with FIBs for example), but it's expensive, and might induce some latent failure modes. Plus with CPUs you need to repackage it (glob top wouldn't make a good thermal connection), which can be extremely difficult. Useful for failure analysis, but no one would even think of repairing a customer return.
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Very correct. The most out of anyone that commented on my conjecture. But what everyone missed is that the fuses/soft fuses don't need to be on the chips, just in the packages. A fuse bank layer in their packages is more reasonable and efficient than insuring and scraping otherwise usable processors.
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You are forgetting the possibility of soft fuses that can be reset or rerouted without opening the package.
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Any evidence?
Brilliant business move (Score:4, Interesting)
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These last two reasons seem at odds at each other. It will fail soon or not all all... but so much time will be pa
A Limited Remedy? (Score:2)
A limited remedy if issues arise as a result of an enthusiast's decision to enable overclocking, for a modest fee.
Just how limited is this remedy? For this modest fee, do they send an engineer in a bunny suit to your home/office to laugh at you and suggest that you not do that again?
Extended warranty! How can I lose? (Score:2)
Ever notice how hard they push extended warranties at the electronics and computer stores? There's a good reason, there's a huge profit margin in them. I bet they pay out $1 for every $20 they take in.
Only chumps buy the extended warranty. Maybe this is a sign... overclockers are chumps?
Insurance premium or replacement fee? (Score:1)
Do you buy this "insurance plan" in advance, just in case? Or wait until you fry your processor then sign up quick and make a claim? How will Intel know?
Just how far.. (Score:2)
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I OC'd my Phenom II X3 720 from 2.8 to 3.4 GHz with a small voltage bump. I anticipate it will last longer than I own it even so. It drops to the same clock rate when idle. I can actually notice the difference in some CPU-intensive applications, like strategy games or data compression. I had to install a $20 heat pipe cooler to accomplish this, but I wanted to anyway as the stock cooler sounds stupid.
Mind that Intel is not Maecenas (Score:1)
No OC need these days. (Score:2)