On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:18:11 +0000, Tony Houghton
<h@realh.co.uk> wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:00:48 -0500
>kony <spam@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> Athlons did not fry themselves without some overt system
>> builder mistake like not putting a heatsink on, choosing
>> some $3 'sink for a 50W chip so the fan failed, etc.
>> Granted it would've been nice if they had a thermal trip
>> feature at that point, but it really wasn't that big of a
>> deal, who really wants to have to depend on a system
>> shutting off instead of never doing so by building it right
>> in the first place?
>
>Even if fans did fail, short of the heatsink faling right off, did they
>really fry or just crash? I think they tended to accidentally save
>themselves by drawing less power while crashed.

Yes they'd crash if overly hot but perpetually overheating
due to failed fan damages the chip still. What happens if a
system crashes? It gets turned off or reset and tried again
to the extent it will eventually be cool enough to run then
overheat and crash and the cycle continues.