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Intel Offers Protection Plan For Overclockers
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."
GreatBunzinni has been posting anonymous accusations listing a whole bunch of Slashdot accounts as being part of a marketing campaign for Microsoft, without any evidence. GreatBunzinni has accidentally outed himself as this anonymous poster. Half the accounts he attacks don't even post pro-Microsoft rhetoric. The one thing they appear to have in common is that they have been critical of Google in the past. GreatBunzinni has been using multiple accounts to post these "shill" accusations, such as Galestar, NicknameOne, and flurp.
That's not the problem. The problem is that moderators gave him +5 Informative and are now modding down the accused, even for legitimate posts. Metamoderation is supposed to address this by filtering out the bad moderators, but clearly it's not working.
This "shill" crap that has been flying around lately has to stop. It's restricting a variety of viewpoints from participating on the site and creating an echo chamber.
In other words, Intel are assholes.
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.
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?
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.
So this is like gravy on the gravy train that's sailing on a gravy boat floating on an ocean of gravy.
Only one thing doesn't make sense...who puts a train on a boat?
Seriously though, the top-end CPU's are way out of a sane budget for their performance, so Intel can probably afford a number of replacements if they get the sales boost out of it from people who don't know any better anyway.
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.
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.
All in all it's hard to fry a modern processor. Probably some time back they put fuses in the processors just in case of short circuit since then know people overclock them. It's probably sophisticated enough now that they can actually recycle the processors. Simply tear down the package and replace the micro fuses and install in a new package. They might even rely on this mechanism in their processor testing and slotting. So if they are already recycling processors with blown fuses why not insure extreme edition processors as well for a little extra. What they insure the processors for covers the costs probably but it makes buying and overclocking the expensive premium extreme edition a little less scary for those that might put down the money.
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?
This is Slashdot. The place where Maxtor drives are awesome, even though they die by the thousand, just like Seagate, Hitatchi, IBM (back in the day), speaking of back in the day, does anyone remember Connor?
Uh, right. Where was I?
Anyhow, everything sucks!
Or rather, with manufacturers of everything producing at such volume, one should surely take all claims of durability or lack thereof with a grain of salt. No matter what you're discussing, you will find no shortage of people who have had no problems with a brand, and no shortage of people who had problems with every product they've purchased from said brand.
This is just Intel jumping on the "extended warranty" bandwagon. "Extended warranty" always means gigantic profits for the guy selling the extended warranty.
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?
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?
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
do you want to over clock? I have pushed machines hard and I found that once we hit dual cores @ 2g things ran just fine;I had no need to overclock a machine since.The hardware is fine now,lets get the wetware up to par.
Who does still overclock?
I will never buy a used PC.
and they will change the socket or some stuff so you have buy a new MB + maybe new ram as well.
I've read several times that Intel CPUs cost a little over $30 to manufacture, so don't think of Intel as Maecenas. Of course, they are lowering their profits by doing this, but they also give a lot more people the incentive and opportunity to overclock without fearing consequences like burnt $1000 CPUs.
There is absolutely no way anyone can justify OC'ing with today's hardware. Back when you could squeeze 50 - 100 MHz out of a CPU, that's a bit different. Today there is really no need to unless you have older hardware and are trying to avoid a pricey upgrade.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!