Windows 7: Is Down clocking the cpu automatically bad for longevity?

my amd has cool and quite and in windows 7 under the power options if its set to the default it will under clock the cpu to 800mhz on idle or a little load 1800mhz or higher load the full 3ghz. although this works good in keeping temp down(on the high performance power setting it would idle at 38c and with the default and cool and quite underclocking 30c) is under clocking then re over clocking and back and forth bad for the longevity of the cpu. does it increase wear??

Nope, it's not like a piece of mechanical machinery that wears out with motion. As long as you don't overclock it, nothing will be harmed by changing the clock speed.

Would be interesting to know why you would want to do this. I fail to see the purpose of the operation.

2 cents reply: I don't think the OP was stating that they were attempting to downclock the cpu, rather the automatic throttling when the cpu is at idle by way of AMDs Cool'n'Quiet.

In any case, the answer is that it is harmless, and saves power and heat.

it saves electricity and reduces the heat by a big chunk. i monitor the frequency with cpu z and when ever i do something like watch a youtube vid or load a decent sized webpage it reclocks higher so it doesnt really effect performance



thats wat i said. this process is supported threw windows 7 with cpus with cool and quite. throttling is the same thing as down clocking its reducing the multipler to x4

The only thing that you ever have to worry about with a normally clocked, normally volted CPU, that never gets a power surge or a meteorite strike ( ) is something called "hole depletion". Running a CPU at maximum speed 24/7 will eventually cause it to fail, or become unreliable, but so will running it at minimum speed 24/7.

It's basically just electronic fatigue, and it affects almost every piece of electronics. Sooner or later, the thing will just wear out from use. The good thing is, if nothing bad ever happens to the computer, the CPU should wear out long after the whole thing is obsolete.

yea i know about surges but thats y you use a surge protector and have a psu with overvolt protection but from wat i gather at the end of ur statement is that ur saying the cpu will last long enough b4 the tech is pretty outdated/by the time i do another upgrade

On my EVGA motherboard it's called C1E halt state and speed step. Too bad I can't enable them while overclocking this particular CPU or I would use them for sure.

I even had one CPU that was overclocked to 3.8 GHz and I could still use the step down feature without hurting stablity.

That feature actually increases the longevity of the CPU and also saves on the power bill. Very useful feature and worth enabling.

Yeah, what I meant was that you aren't going to hurt the CPU, or shorten the life of it by taking the clock up and down.