Ben Hutchings wrote:
> [...]
> I'm afraid I don't have anything other than anecdotal evidence that
> overheating is a common problem. However, I wonder why the various
> temperature monitoring and control systems have been implemented on PC
> motherboards and in CPUs if it isn't a significant risk. (This means
> that the risk is being removed or greatly reduced, but it's still
> there in older PCs.)
>
There was a lovely article at Arstechnia a while back that detailed how
AMD CPUs caught on fire (with the heat sink removed) and how Intel CPUs
(P3 and P4) either rebooted and/or slowed down considerably depending on
the vintage of the CPU's thermal control mechanisms. When engineers
make assumptions about how their silicon behaves under full load at
production clock rates, bad things ensue. Of course, it's probably a
resonable assumption that nobody's pocket will ever see 150C... still
that doesn't mean that the cell phone will never see 150C while
operating (leaving the phone in your car during Tokyo summer weather is
a sure fire way to expose it to 150C operating conditions).
Received on Wed May 21 00:57:53 2003