Never - I'm not that wreckless neither do I push my hardware to breaking point by trying to find out how many volts I can pump through it.
Ive always been careful with my hardware especially when it comes to any sort of tweaking. So no i dont place any value in the 'no questions asked' warranty policy.
I dont like faffing around with lengthy RMA processes and procedures unless I really have to. Ive had my fair share of RMA'ing graphic cards and the odd hard drive here and there though.
But its getting to a point where I dont even bother making any serious effort to OC my graphics cards. Slap an extra 20-30mhz on the clocks here and there, stress test it a little then jump in a game and see how it does.
as for 24/7 voltage for IB, I simply just googled the recommended voltage and gleamed info from loads of other forums. I recently did my first IB build for a friend of mine and his is doing 4.6Ghz at something like 1.37v. Only had enough to put it through one pass of Prime for 12hrs but it passed it and chewed through IBT without any problems and has been working flawlessly with any game my friend throws at it, from BF3 to ARMA II, Crysis 2 and whatever he plays.
I keep watch on the temps and i keep it under 70'c as much as I can.
I was speaking in generalizations, not to you specifically.
I mean really, at this point, there are so many protections built into the hardware, it really is pretty hard to hurt one of these chips, adn that's why Intel is willing to offer that warranty in the first place. Now, if you're gonna puish it and go really cold, then sure, you might break things. If you pop the lid, you void the wartranty, obviously, so I see that choice of TIM for IVB an intentional one made to save your CPU.
However, at teh same time, when you overvolt, you're gonna shorten the life of the chip, so why not get the warranty? You can transfer it to a new user when you sell the chip, too...Intel really has taken this to the next level when it comes to this warranty.
Has anyone been able to overclock these CPUs without turning on turbo mode, like BarbaricSoul in the picture above? I'm talking about multiplier overclocking, because the CPU ignores any value higher than the default if turbo is turned off. This is what I see.
Yes, it can work, and it might be board-BIOS dependant. I know SB does, I haven't bothered to try with IVB, and SB-E, you need Turbo for OC with some 3960X chips, and Intel will replace retail chips that do that, I heard.