Herb,
Are you seriously trying to tell me that cooling fans do not fail?
They do fail, but you can protect from it by using a program like Motherboard Monitor, where you can set up boundry conditions, and action taken (such as shutdown). If the fan dies, It doesn't immediately mean a dead chip, since the heatsink can absorb and radiate some heat away for some time.
When you have an immediate problem is when the heatsink is not attached at all, or when the heatsink is improperly attached, and heat doesn't get transfered. I am speaking from personal experience of dealing with a fair number of Athlons by now, frying one.
I am not quite sure if P4 or P3 do not have the same problem, that is if you can fry them by running them without heatsink. I would be surprised if this was the case. Let's take P4. If the thermal management kicks in and runs at 1/2 of the speed, it still generates way more heat than the chip even with the heat spreader can radiate. I don't seem to recall if there was a complete halt of the chip implemented in P4 thermal management.
The reason you don't hear much about P4 or P3s being fired is because so few people build their own machines with Intel processors. Prior to the price drop, the only people who ended up with Intel chips were customers of Dell, Gateway, E-machines etc.
I will have to check the BBSs, but prior to the price drop, there was basically zero interest in Intel chips on part of DIY crowd.
Joe |
