I've been overclocking processors since 1996... I'm talking those flimsy 486DX/75's and such, with heatsinks that couldn't even pass as a light duty paperweight. Did my share of Athlon and Duron overclocks too. NEVER burned out a CPU before I had a need to upgrade/rebuild for more horsepower to keep up with the workload I needed.

I've had that E8400 overclocked from 3 GHz to 4GHz since somewhere in 2009, it was pushed to 3.6 GHz day one when I got it in late 2008. And it would be on all day/night at times (mostly bazaaring in XI, but I would periodically tweak something and run Prime95 for 24 hours or so to test it), all day sessions on the weekends, and played more intensive games without fail at 4GHz (was playing the new Wing Commander for a while, was considering getting in on Roberts new MMO, but just couldn't resist XIV after the new trailers were released). It's main use now has been encoding/reencoding videos and archiving (only system I have with a Blu-Ray burner in it, and a fast 1TB Hitachi hard drive).

That thing runs this game SOLID at 4 GHz STILL, after 5 years of steady abuse, even with the "outdated" ATI 4870 512MB video card in it and Windows XP.

The trick to a stable, long term overclock is getting things set up right in the first place.