Is overclocking covered under warranty?

Say I ordered a inspiron 9300 with 2 year warranty. If i overclocked the geforce 6800 go to squeeze some extra performance out of it and something went wrong and the card crapped out even though i was trying to be responsible.....would dell cover replacement of the card??? Or does any overclocling whatsoever automatically void the warranty? Im guessing they already can tell if u fried the card.

 

no, and they can't really tell you overclocked. i have yet to hear somebody fried a cpu or gpu by overclocking for 6 years. it will at most lock up, but you can always reset the clock rate.

 

I believe it is covered under warranty, beecause they wont know what happened i believe. If you got a certain warranty like complete coverage then yes for sure.

 

Hi,
My notebook has BIOS "Performance" option which overclocks FSB and thus CPU. It still works with Speedstep and so on. SO I think they better cover it in my 2 year warranty. I believe temperature is one of the main reasons IF you fry the CPU/GPU. I don't see any difference in temp when I overclock MEMORY on my graphic card. When on top of that I set the memory latencies I get nice boost in framerates. Tests don't show any gain from overclocking VPU/GPU. I hope it will not kill any of the thingies inside. I must admit I didn't have that experience yet.

Ivan

 

While we are on warranty, what about Artic Silver? Is applying it gonna void the warranty?

 

I never seen Dell authorize users to overclock, so I seriously doubt overclocking is covered by warranty. Accidental coverage only covers spills, accidents, etc... not modifiying parts in your laptop. Even if you do something simple like upgrade the RAM. Technically, the new ram is not covered and any damage that is caused by it is not covered. If you cause any damage while you have the laptop case open,the damage is not covered. Dell's warranty is limited on coverage, even the 4 year plus warranty.

From Dell's warranty (posted online)
Dell does not cover problems that result from:
*External causes such as accident, abuse, misuse, or problems with electrical power
*Servicing not authorized by Dell
*Usage that is not in accordance with product instructions
*Failure to follow the product instructions or failure to perform preventive maintenance
*Problems caused by using accessories, parts, or components not supplied by Dell

SG

 

Cool, i didnt know some of those. Thanks sg!

 

OK so if its not convered under warranty is there some safe zone for people who would like to squeeze just a little bit of extra performance out of their cpu/gpu........is 10% pushing it or respecteable within range with the stock cooling?

 

There really isn't a safe zone. Most laptop warranties are pretty limited to only covering natural hardware defects. I didn't realize this at the time I bought my laptop, but laptop warranties really don't cover that much. Chances are that if Dell doesn't see it is a hardware defect or their fault that the part failed, then it is not covered under warranty.

SG

 

here's the bottom line:

overclocking voids your warranty but it's hard for the manufacturer to tell that it's been done. however, if you burn out your cpu/vpu/ram, they may be suspicious and not honor the warranty.

arctic silver voids your warranty and it's quite easy for the manufacturer to tell that you've applied it.

 

Not that its any of my buisness and theres many like you who want to and have overclocked but why would you want too? Playing cs and my old 1.6 community i heard alot of people all proud of overclocking. Seriously i understand if your system is garbage and your oc keeps it running system hog programs well, but those i9300's with 6800's are **** strong.