Unlock phenom 2 good bad or ugly

Well unlocking the cores will definitely make it uses more power therefore higher temperature. Heat does chip away at the cpu's life. If you do plan to unlock and possibly overclock make sure you use good thermal compound and aftermarket heatsink. I recommend Hyper 212+ if you're finding a decent $30-ish one.
 
Just unlocking it? Not perceptibly I would imagine, overclocking it heavily 24/7 might, but not if its a simple unlock,
@wintermint, I run my 2.9 triplecore as a 3.5 quad on standard hs and paste 😛
Moto
 
Good coolings always advisable hehe,
but this has been covered to death and back,
yes the extra heat/voltage will wear out the chip quicker Technically speaking,
but at such a small percentage its irrelevant, especially in enthusiast circles where you will most likely replace said components well before failure
its like dying a day before you would have because you jogged all your life, no real problem overall
Moto
 
i have it unlocked just to a quad (or a dual core on crack) the nb is at 1.2ghz and the nb voltage is at 1.3 the cpu's vcore is at 1.41ish and is on stockcooling and is super stable