Re: [RFC/SERIOUS] grilling troubled CPUs for fun and profit?

[Claudio Martins <ctpm@ist.utl.pt>]

On Monday 19 June 2006 21:00, linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote:
> You accelerate nothing. Bit heaven? A CPU without a fan will go into
> a cold, cold, shutdown, requiring a hardware reset to get it out of
> that latched, no internal clock running, mode. Try it. I have had
> broken plastic heat-sink hold-downs let the entire heat-sink fall off
> the CPU. The machine just stops. I didn't know why it was stopping

 That may well be true for Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Ahtlon64/Opteron CPUs but 
it is definitely *not* what happens on older AMD CPUs. Actually we have had a 
case of smoke coming out of a box when the heatsink fan on an Ahtlon XP CPU 
stopped. You could still smell the burnt plastic from the socket the next day 
in the room ;-)
 And I personally know of a least another case with an Athlon XP.

 I think Intel used to be better than AMD concerning CPU casing and the size 
of the area in thermal contact with the heatsink, but not anymore. 
Opteron/Athlon64 case seems to be at least as good as Intel's, and the chips 
should now have thermal throttling, though I haven't tried it!

Regards

Cláudio