Risks associated with Over Clocking and my current OC.

Hey guys, so I am doing my first ever OC after doing some reading and right now Prime95 blend is still running and has been for about 6 hours. I'm going to let it do 8 hours and then I will consider it done for the day and do a full 12 hour test tonight.

I have a few concerns before I decide on whether or not I am going to stick with my OC or not though.

What are the risks associated with over-clocking?

Will my machine break-down faster?

Will I experience memory corruption or other issues?

I am not a guy that upgrades my PC every year and I NEED this pc to last at least 3 years before I plan on upgrading CPU and mobo and everything. I will probably update the GPU maybe even SLI around christmas time, but other than that I really need this machine to be stable and last me till 2014-15 if the world lasts that long!

Does OC'ing put my machine at a higher risk of having corruption of parts?

Basically what are the risks of OC'ing and is my OC considered 'safe'?

The main purpose of my PC build is gaming.

I have decided to go with a pretty moderate/high OC at the moment but I will readily lower it if it means I am risking my machine breaking down sooner than I would like.

Here is what I have done so far:

Right now OC is at 4.8GHZ at 1.410 voltage.

Currently I have done the following in BIOS:

Disabled:

- C1E

- EIST

- CPU THERMAL MONITOR

- Turbo Multiplier

-IGPU

ENABLED:

- Hyperthreading

-XMP profile 1 to set RAM at 1600MHZ

- C3, C6States


HWmonitor temps:

Max temps reached: 62 on coolest core and 68 on the others. Package says 70CMAX
Min Temps: Coolest core was 50, hottest 59 others mid 50's

AVG temps at the moment: One core runs significantly cooler at 60-62C others are high 60's after blend for 6+ hour so far.


My system specs:

Case: Cooler Master HAF X 942

MOBO: Gigabyte UD5H Z77

CPU: i7 2700k

CPU Heatsink: Corsair h100 with Cougar Vortex 120mm fans in push/pull (intake)

PSU: 1000W OCZ 80+Gold

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1600MHZ RAM 1.5V

GPU: Galaxy GTX 580

SSD/HDD: Crucial m4128G (boot Drive) WD 1TB 7200RPM Caviar Black (Storage)

Speakers: Logitech Z623 2.1 Speaker Setup

Headset: Corsair Vengeance 1500 7.1 virtual surround HeadPhones

Mouse: Razer Deathadder black edition 3.5G

Keyboard: Cooler Master QuickFirePro Mechanical (Cherry Brown)

MousePad: QCK Heavy and PureTrak Talent (Using QCK Heavy)

Monitor: ViewSonic LED 2453mh-led 1080P 60HZ

I think that basically covers my system setup.

I'm confused.. can I make it so my my machine runs at stock frequencies but only kicks up to my OC under load? What should I have my settings set too, am I doing it wrong?

I re-enabled c1e and by speedstep I assume you are talking about turbo? multiplier or whatever? Can I set-up my OC so it only OC's when through turbo mode? If so will how do I set up the voltage so runs at stock voltage and only increases under load.

By the way, I am following ultimate OC guide posted here by Sin.

My temps at idle are only 28-32C..