Intel Offers Overclocking Insurance For $20-$35 on Core i5, i7 Chips

From DailyTech: Intel Corp. (INTC) is pioneering an unusual policy -- condoning overclocking for a small fee.

Traditionally if you overclocked your Intel CPU you voided its warranty. But with Intel increasingly selling CPUs and chipsets with unlocked clock speed and memory bus speed settings, the company has followed in the line of some high end graphics card makers (and a handful of gaming systems builders), who have guaranteed warranties on overclocked devices.

Intel will offer warranties on the Core i5 2500K for a one-time purchase of $20 USD, on the Core i7 2600K or 2700K for $25 USD, and on the Core i7 3930K or 3960X for $35 USD. In exchange if customers damage their CPU by overclocking it, they will get a one time replacement.

The "K" and "X" notations on these chips represent increasing degrees of BIOS unlocking/overclocking freedom.

Any retail customer who purchases one of the supported chips has access to the new plan during this pilot phase. And buyers who purchase assembled systems from four custom PC vendors -- Cyberpower, Canada's Computers and Electronics, the U.K.'s Scan Computers, and Australia's Altech Computers -- will also receive the protection as part of their bundle purchase of select models.

The warranties may be a bit superfluous to all but most extreme overclockers, as Intel's CPUs and chipsets typically have factory resets to protect the system against thermal damage from overclocking. Some do override these protections, but it can be a difficult process involving custom BIOS, so for most the protection plan largely overlaps with existing hardware protections.

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