Intel is pleased to announce the introduction of a new pilot plan targeted at the enthusiast community. The enthusiast community is a critical market segment for Intel and we are looking at more opportunities to serve that community. In this spirit, Intel is announcing a new pilot service plan for “K”, “X”, and LGA2011-socketed boxed processors called the Performance Tuning Protection Plan. This Plan will provide certain out-of-warranty service offerings in the event of damage caused by over-clocking or over-voltaging by the user. By purchasing this Plan and meeting the Plan’s criteria, the user can receive a one-time replacement processor if the user’s over-voltaging or over-clocking causes the original processor to fail. This pilot Plan in no way expands, changes or extends the original three year standard warranty and is simply a Plan the user may want to purchase for over-clocking or over-voltaging.



This pilot Plan will be launched on January 18, 2012, at 12:01AM PST and last for six months. The first phase of the Plan will include 4 resellers: CyberPower*, Canada Computers and Electronics*, Scan Computers*, and Altech Computers*. On February 13, 2012, Intel plans to add additional resellers to the Plan. Intel will also be providing the Plan directly to customers at the following website: http://www.intel.com/go/tuningplan for the duration of the Plan. Intel will evaluate the Plan throughout the six months and decide whether or not to proceed past the pilot phase. For more information please visit http://www.intel.com/go/tuningplan.



Intel Core i7 3960X: $35

Intel Core i7 3930K: $35

Intel Core i7 2700K: $25

Intel Core i7 2600K: $25

Intel Core i5 2500K: $20

Intel today unveiled a pilot program that provides warranty protection to overclockers in the event they get a little bit overzealous with pushing the pedal to the metal. For a fee, Intel will provide a one-time replacement of certain processors that were damaged by overclocking and/or over-volting. It's completely optional and in addition to the original three-year standard warranty that already applies to Intel's retail boxed processors.Processors in which you can purchase a Protection Plan include:

Intel isn't yet ready to flat-out endorse overclocking but the Santa Clara chip maker is perfectly content to "provide a limited remedy if issues arise as a result of [an enthusiast's] decision to enable overclocking," for a modest fee, of course.

It's a one-time replacement guarantee without the option to double- or triple-down with multiple Plans for a single processor, but quite frankly, if you manage to burn out a processor twice-in-a-row by overclocking, you're better off running at stock until you figure out what you're doing. It is, after all, fairly difficult (though not impossible) to kill a CPU these days with all the safeguards that are built in.

You can purchase or learn more about Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan here, and be sure to read over the FAQ and Terms & Conditions.

What are your thoughts on overclocking warranties? Is this something you'd like to see more of from Intel or AMD, or do you think it's a waste of money?