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AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

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31–40 of 88 posts

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I kinda assumed that all the above companies would already be doing something similar. I want to live in a world with warranties, so if there's a non-privacy-violating way for companies to protect themselves a little bit from fraudulent warranty claims, why shouldn't they do it?

They should, I was just speaking about hidding the fact from the customer. (everytime NV/Apple/Intel do something stupid people react with fuck them vibes, everytime AMD do something stupid peopel on hacker news are defending them like AMD is some sort of small startup)

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#33
post #13

apparently it does not void the warranty: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-says-ove...

AMD also says it will in one of their hidden footnotes at the bottom of a marketing page:

>Overclocking and/or undervolting AMD processors and memory, including without limitation, altering clock frequencies / multipliers or memory timing / voltage, to operate outside of AMD’s published specifications will void any applicable AMD product warranty, even when enabled via AMD hardware and/or software.

From: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo

The moral of this story is overclocking is not for the naive nor the ignorant, and you must be willing to write off any hardware subjected to overclocking.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#34
Of all the CPUs I have had not a single one broke from use before they were replaced due to obsolescence and I definitely have been pushing them. How common is CPUs being permanently damaged from reasonable overclocking anyway, especially modern ones that have integrated sensors and clock themselves down automatically?

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#35
post #18

I don't know if overclocking pays off much these days. The chips are already taken close to limits with factory settings, so there's not much overclocking potential unless you use extreme cooling. I fondly remember the Core 2 Duo days when I overclocked my CPU with more than 50% using the stock cooler. It's nice to 50% performance for free, particularly when you are poor. I even remember overclocking an old laptop wi…

One argument used to be that there's always manufacturing tolerances that you can exploit to your advantage. However, those tolerances were in many cases optimized out of the process by better binning -- if a particular CPU reliably worked at a higher clock speed, it would simply be sold at a higher speed. But also, whether a chip is actually stable at settings X or Y has become a lot harder to determine due to compl…

>But also, whether a chip is actually stable at settings X or Y has become a lot harder to determine due to complexity

There are many good software for stress testing CPUs and GPUs. Just run AIda64 or OCCP stress tests for a long time and you are good to go if no problems arise. If there are problems, you redo the settings and run the tests again.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#36
post #17

I don't know if overclocking pays off much these days. The chips are already taken close to limits with factory settings, so there's not much overclocking potential unless you use extreme cooling. I fondly remember the Core 2 Duo days when I overclocked my CPU with more than 50% using the stock cooler. It's nice to 50% performance for free, particularly when you are poor. I even remember overclocking an old laptop wi…

The days of creating a resistor bridge with a pencil to enable extra cores and altering the multiplier are long gone. I still remember pushing my duron with a massive aluminium block on top of it getting 100+mhz more out of it.

I remember when you could enable cores in a GPU just by flashing a different firmware.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#37
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 10850k cpu, with a HUGE Be Quiet heatsink. Any heavy CPU workload will draw 300+watt, without any overclocking, the cpu will downclock, but not throttle around 100 Celsius. Overclocking has never been more dead than it is today. The days with old Celeron 300 or Core 2 Duo days with 50% + overclock speed are long gone. Today you will most like hit max temperature and cpu throttling.

> the cpu will downclock, but not throttle around 100 Celsius. Downclocking is literally throttling. But there's like another 10% performance that can be unlocked if you'd go full custom watercooling.

>But there's like another 10% performance that can be unlocked if you'd go full custom watercooling.

It's actually less than 10%. I'd say closer to around 5% - as a custom watercooling enthusiast. 2-3% gains going from a great dual tower air cooler to an All-in-One closed loop (but extra noise from the pump) and another 2-3% gains for a great CPU waterblock and thicker, denser radiators of custom watercooling (and least noise of all, assuming you choose an appropriate pump speed).

5% performance gains, and 500% price increase <:o)

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda assumed that all the above companies would already be doing something similar. I want to live in a world with warranties, so if there's a non-privacy-violating way for companies to protect themselves a little bit from fraudulent warranty claims, why shouldn't they do it?

They should, I was just speaking about hidding the fact from the customer. (everytime NV/Apple/Intel do something stupid people react with fuck them vibes, everytime AMD do something stupid peopel on hacker news are defending them like AMD is some sort of small startup)

Maybe it was not advertised pre-sale as well as it should be but do you really count this as hiding anything from the customer: https://twitter.com/hjc4869/status/1734421088606851462

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#39

I don't know if overclocking pays off much these days. The chips are already taken close to limits with factory settings, so there's not much overclocking potential unless you use extreme cooling. I fondly remember the Core 2 Duo days when I overclocked my CPU with more than 50% using the stock cooler. It's nice to 50% performance for free, particularly when you are poor. I even remember overclocking an old laptop wi…

The most basic "overclocking" these days is actually undervolting. The clock speed you can leave to the chip. The undervolting makes the chip run cooler, which in turn means it can stay at higher frequencies longer.

You need higher voltage to have a chip (CPU, GPU, RAM) stable at a higher frequency. Higher voltage means more heat, so you need better cooling.

Re: AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

#40

For those who just read the title: the "fuse" doesn't stop the cpu from working, it's just a flag for AMD support to know that the chip has been overclocked and this might invalidate the warranty.

I remembered the Xbox 360 processor also had eFuses:

https://free60.org/Hardware/Fusesets/

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