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The Report of My Thermal Death Have Been...
A reader writes "Not too long ago, Tom's Hardware posted a video of the grisly events that take place when the heatsink is removed on an AMD Athlon MP 1.2GHz in an attempt to show that the chip has inadequate thermal protection unlike the Pentium 4. Apparently, this is not the case. This new video, which looks like was done by AMD, shows the system continuing to work when the heatsink is removed. Even 9 minutes of Quake3 without the fan operating wasn't enough to destroy the processor. So who is right? It's in AMD's best interest to show that their product doesn't disintigrate under extreme conditions. " Update: 10/30 14:11 GMT by H : Note that it was Terry 'quad3d' Wang that actually did the video - not AMDZone.
I bought an Athlon 1.4, and i screwed up the heatsink (boy, them things are a bitch), and I melted it, just under a little use.
$1.5 grand in mobo, processors, memory down the tubes.
Yeah, I'm an idiot. But Athlon are easier to fuck up than Intel.
All your thermal death are belong to us.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Moreover, multiple hardware sites have had instances of Athlons *immediately* frying themselves when powered up without a heatsink and fan, including most recently HardOCP (who acidentally wrecked one of the 1800+ Athlons). It would appear whatever monitoring AMD is trying to show doesn't exist in most real world mobos.
AMD needs to quit playing the marketing games and get their clock speeds up.
Firstly, I need to make my opinion on tomshardware absolutely clear -- the articles are clearly written by kids with half a clue, mostly picking up fancy words from specs documents and running the occasional benchmarking routine. I take everything they say with a pinch of salt.
Secondly, what the fuck does anyone need to run a ~2GHz AMD CPU on the desktop for? I was moving a few machines around today, and my brother happened to notice that the fan/heatsink had come loose off my dual P-II 233MHz. Yes, it was hotter than the other CPU, and no, I have no idea how long ago this had happened, but it was probably earlier in the day. But no damage caused.
Yes, that's right, 2x 233MHz, it's quick enough for me, and I have no worries about overheating my PC or myself for being close to it, nor do I panic when the electric bill comes.
Not that I would have worried that much, because the motherboard has clock throttling and saving that, a critical CPU temperature setting. This, to me, is more important than the ability to pay the latest Power Bash Pro 3D Plus Quake at 3000fps.
Now, to extoll the virtues of the Alpha box on my right, with more sensors inside it than I can throw a stick at... even keeps a log in non-volatile memory of temp/fan status over time.
A little effort in buying quality not quantity (more MHz != more value) goes a long way, boys...