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The Joys Of Losing Your Cooling Device

Posted by Hemos on from the burn-baby-burn dept.

nitecreep wrote to us about Tom's latest article: What happens to procs when the heatsinks fall off?. Having just had my brand new fan stop working on my computer, I can sympathize. I've found that it takes my 1.2 Ghz Athlon to reach 80 degrees Celsius in about 6 minutes, from time of starting machine. The results of running without a heatsink at all are....interesting.

10 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Lost a heat sink once... by vought · · Score: 1, Funny

    Fried my Athlon. Doesn't work right anymore. Once a crash-proof macine, now a bomb factory.

    1. Re:Lost a heat sink once... by grahamlee · · Score: 2, Funny

      Only computer I ever fried was a Spectrum, but that was quite funny. I bought it at a car boot sale for £4 and was cycling home with it in a carrier bag over the handlebars. It went between the spokes of the front wheel, causing the wheel to saw through the plastic case and a large chunk of metal that looked quite useless.

      Anyways, when I got it home I plugged it in, and it booted up with a fabulous display of white acrid smoke. Needless to say, Bubble Bobble didn't work.

  2. He he he by JoeLinux · · Score: 3, Funny

    I remember I could tell if the 386 was on or not by how often the Centralized Air conditioning came on. My Celeron 433 runs so cool now I keep it under a blanket for noise protection. Ah....Peltier devices are so cool. (no pun intended). My question is: When are they going to come up with a heat sinking device that runs like the engine block on a car (I.E. the water/freon/liquid nitrogen/liquid helium/butane actually flows in channels built for it within a heatsink block)

    JoeLinux

  3. now all you need.... by Scrybe · · Score: 2, Funny

    are Marshmallows, Grahm Crackers, and Chocolate. Be sure to invite all the slashcrew to share your s'mores!

    --

    <This .sig left intentionally blank>

  4. Doesn't everyone smoke at least 1 TBird? by mmmbeer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can sympathize too. I cracked a corner off my Athlon 1.2 (266) over a hundred bucks ago (back when they were $250). When it didn't boot I decided to see how hot it would get without the heatsink. I turned it off as soon as it started to smoke, but like any idiot I just had to see what temperature silicon starts to smoke at. Luckilly I had a calibrated measurement device, my finger. That T-Bird burned the heck out of me, and you could almost make out the "A" branded into my finger!

    I've also just cracked the core on my current 1.33 T-Bird, and I've just picked up a 1.4 at lunch today. Is this some sort of marketing scheme by AMD?!!? I figure they're sticking it to me hard enough with the way their stock is plummeting, every point making my Tahitian retirement much more distant.

    Cap'n Bry
  5. You've got the Burning Feeling... by Whyte+Wolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    While working as a network admin once, I had a processor burn out without its heatsink. Smoke started rising from the open case, so one of my comrads in arms decided to 'put out the fire' with his bottle of Coke.

    I've never seen a machine burn so brightly. We were lucky (or maybe not) that the building's sprinklers were on the blink.

    And I live to tell the tale....

    --

    Beware the Whyte Wolf.

    With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...

  6. Tel me abot it by BillyGoatThree · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I've found that it takes my 1.2 Ghz Athlon to reach 80 degrees Celsius in about 6 minutes, from time of starting machine. The results of running without a heatsink at all are....interesting."

    One time my stopped working heatsink and the to go first thing was spell/grammar check my.

    --
    324006
  7. Too much heat can be GOOD, sometimes by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 3, Funny
    I remember a story when the first Pentiums came out, and they had the FPU bug. A guy wanted to swap his chip out, but couldn't. They had glued the processor in. Turns out his comp maker had found out that Zero Insertion Force also meant Zero Removal Force and people were swiping the chips fairly often.


    So the guy's pissed, wondering how he's gonna get the offending non-dividing Pentium out. Then he realizes, hey it's a Pentium. He took off the heat sink, ran his comp for a while. It did it's impression of an Easy-Bake oven and generated enough heat to melt the glue. He then removed it and got his replacement.

  8. Re:fire? by Derek · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...not too long before explosion and CHAR marks all along the back of the enclosure...

    Sounds like you were lucky. When my drive blew, I had CHAR, INT, LONG, WORD and DOUBLE WORD marks all over the back of my enclosure. Not to mention all the buffered data that splattered all over the place. Bloody mess, that's what it was.

    -Derek

  9. Top advertising by marauder · · Score: 2, Funny
    Right under the picture of the Athlon 1.2GHz's smoking, charred remains?

    "Click here to find lowest price for AthlonMP 1.2 GHz."

    I'll take two!