The tech publications make this out to be something totally new as if it never happened before in the life of system overclocking, gamers, and geeks willing to push their limits.
Some microprocessors can be clocked higher than others and this also changes over time due to the stepping, or batch-version of the chips. As the stepping number, or version goes up, the batches of chips have a higher success rate and fewer chips are binned because the manufacturing process for this chip model has been refined over time and like anything bugs have been worked out that increase the quality and yield of the product.
The binned chips are the ones that are set at lower clock speeds since they can't work at the highest clock speeds. The problem is people buy the cheaper chips and overclock them thinking that they can bring them up to higher speeds without issues. What we're seeing is people are going beyond the specs for these components and crashing their computers and most likely damaging the components. If components are stressed for long periods of time, their lifespan is decreased substantially.
As a hardware technician who used to work at the component level replacing integrated circuits and whatnot, we were taught that components need to work within their specs, otherwise there is instability and component damage. Today, more than 40 years later, this still holds true even though we have the ability to increase the operating voltages and clock frequencies within a range.
Even though my systems can be overclocked, I have never done so and my computers have lasted for years and usually die of old age or due to some other component failure not related to overclocking.
