All Ears wrote:
The real point with this tread, was to prove that something actually does
happen during burn-in of electronic equipment.


The purpose of "burn-in" in the electronics industry is to eliminate
infant mortality problems or early failures. It is NOT to improve
performance of components/systems. "Burn-in" provides stress, in the
form of higher operating temperature that accelerates failures, that
will expose weak (by design or by fabrication errors)components/systems.

Seems like, even with computers, that all aspects of this phenomenon cannot
be explained from a technical point of view, but it is generally accepted
that the issue exist.

No, there is really nothing in the "burn-in" process of electronics that
cannot be explained by existing knowledge. When something fails during
burn-in, failure analyses are usually performed to pinpoint culprits.


Regarding over clocking, the different versions of CPU models are made to
handle up to a certain max. freq., but only the best of the batch will
actually reach top specifications, the rest are sold as lower freq. types.
So kept within the limits of the maximum specifications of a given version
of CPU, I would consider it safe to over clock.


I do not believe "burn-in" improves the ability of a CPU to be
overclocked. What you were observing is that due to slight changes in
operating temperature, and/or slight adjustments of BIOS parameters,
and/or slight changes in the system (like different memory chips or
video cards), the ability of the system to run at a higher clock
frequency is changed. It is NOT that letting the CPU run for a while
will improve the performance of the CPU. You will also find cases when
after a while the system appears to NOT be able to run at as high as
speed as before, for example when the ambient temperature gets higher.

Overclocking in all likelihood will not damage the CPU chip. The risk is
that you lose valuable data, or you lose work, when your system crashes
unexpectedly. It is foolish to overclock if you are depending on the PC
to run reliably.