Thermal degradation is a reality, plain and simple. High heat flux can delaminate layers, and this heat must travel to the surface edge of the core to dissipate. Overclocking is akin to throwing nitrous and supercharger on a 4-banger and wondering why it always needs maintenance.

I will agree that most people should not overclock. You will forever live in fear that something is about to explode.
 
But also think about this.
 
Look at my CPU fan compared to the standard Intel fan:
 
http://www.arachnaut.net/MORBIUS/Compare-Fans.png
 

 
The wimpy Intel fan blows heat downwards and probably towards the memory cards, while most overclock fans blow the heat above the motherboard and directly out. Even better if one uses liquid cooling. There are 5 fans in my tower.
 
And what about the temperature? I never turn my machine off except for routine things. It's almost always running at about 20C and the CPU cruises at 1.6 GHz. That's hardly called overclocking. It only kicks in when needed.
 
http://www.arachnaut.net/MORBIUS/Does-it-run-hot.png
 

 
http://www.arachnaut.net/MORBIUS/Is-it-Overclocked.png
 

 

This would be my system overclocked (a bit of a dog):

I HAVE liquid cooling, and still do not bother to overclock my i7 2600k CPU.  I don't happen to feel the extra heat worth the marginal performance difference for me doing audio streaming.
 
Certainly the CPU-portion of things would run faster, but I am not taxing the CPU in any case, and most of the work is done by the hard drives, so I choose to just keep things quiet and will likely have a system that will last longer.  Prior systems I have had that were overclocked just wore out faster, and I don't feel like dealing with that.
 
More power to those to do chose the overclock path, nonetheless.
 
Bob Bone

Nice one, Alex.

LOL... I had liquid cooling... and it ruptured and blew the coolant all over the inside of my machine!! Rained all over my ASUS GTX580 dcii... but I am glad I bought a higher end 580 when I built the machine. I am also VERY glad I was sitting here when it happened... the computer started squealing but wouldn't shut itself off. Vacuumed and blew all the coolant out, waited 24 hours and brought it back online with copper pipes!
 
When I googled that coolant system, it had already been pulled because they were prone to ruptures... but most they ruptured on lost their machines.

Hello - long time Cakewalk user here. I am hoping I still will be after this.....  I upgraded to the New version of SONAR X3 - Awesome!  then the couple upgrades since its release. I thinks its C now?  Anyways - everything worked great. Well Sunday Morning I also did a Windows update as I do not have it update automatically - I will manually do the update. Anyway, said there were a couple Important updates so I updated.  Well Sunday night I had my bass player over and I went to pull up some older recorded tracks that I recorded on SONAR X1 / SONAR X2.  Anyways,  I tried to open them in SONAR X3 (latest version) and it came up with an error and then SONAR was forced to shut down.  I think I saw a couple times saying somthing about corrupted files?  WHAT!?  This concerns me - there better not be any corrupted files - as they were not corrupted before.... I can not loose any of these files/tracks/songs. I am currently working on a project - well a couple projects.... and another project from a band. These files are not corrupted (atleast they better not be now!!!! - because they were not before,.... )  as I have opened them before many times never having any issue. The only thing that changed was the new SONAR X3 update and I did the Windows Update. So I thought - maybe its something wiggy with the new version of SONAR X3. I jumped on the Cakewalk forums lastnight and found other people having similar problems. However, it sounded like it was not clear if it was the new version of SONAR X3 or the New Windows updates.  Well,  I think it is the Windows updates.... Here is why,....  I still have SONAR X2 version on my computer - and I know I could open the files/songs in Sonar X2 as I had recorded them in that version and have opened them before with no problem.  Well,  guess what?   Same thing CRASH - SONAR X2  forced to close... So,  I am thinking it is not the new version of SONAR X3 with the issue as SONAR X2 should of opened the files with no problem. But, since SONAR X2 crashed also - I am thinking it is something to do with the new Windows updates....  Anybody else know - or have any news on this? CAKEWALK!?
 
P.S. I also started a new thread about this.

> P.S. I also started a new thread about this.
 
And that is what we call an attempted thread hijack ;) here is your post in case people wish to reply to this ( I have already)...
http://forum.cakewalk.com/SONAR-X3-Crashing-when-opening-older-sessionsrecorded-material-m2934255.aspx#2934289
 
Moving on...

mettelus
LOL... I had liquid cooling... and it ruptured and blew the coolant all over the inside of my machine!! Rained all over my ASUS GTX580 dcii... but I am glad I bought a higher end 580 when I built the machine. I am also VERY glad I was sitting here when it happened... the computer started squealing but wouldn't shut itself off. Vacuumed and blew all the coolant out, waited 24 hours and brought it back online with copper pipes!
 
When I googled that coolant system, it had already been pulled because they were prone to ruptures... but most they ruptured on lost their machines.

This was one reason I did not go the liquid route. Even if the liquid caused no damage, there's very little thermal mass on the CPU if the pump fails. If the fan stops, at least there is still a massive copper heatsink attached.
 
But fans can have issues, too.
My wife had a graphics card that was mid-priced and had a small fan. One day the fan blades spun off the card and gouged out the motherboard!
 
 

 

arachnaut
This was one reason I did not go the liquid route. Even if the liquid caused no damage..

I was interested that Jim Roseberry @StudioCat talked me out of a liquid cooled PC. He said that for my needs it wasn't worth the trouble. I've been very happy with my PC and if I'm missing anything with it, I don't know what. He was right that this less expensive model has served my purposes quite well.
 
Thanks, Jim!