My processor ran 10-12 hours without fan

Hi guys

A wire got entangled in my fan blades and it stopped, leading my processor to run for 10-12 hours straight without it. I played games, watched tv, downloaded stuff etc pretty much the day to day things in these hours. Then i noticed the 'cpu threshold' warning in terminal and rectified the problem. Now i want to know have i done any harm to my processor? Its a brand new(see sig) one month old processor.

As far as you can see, it's still working now, right? I'm no expert but I'd expect that it's fine. You could try doing some processor intensive stuff for a while, and if it crashes, maybe there's a problem.

Yes its working fine now, but like you said time to fire up some heavy duty games. I'll report back.

Does it have a heat sink as well? I remember the days when CPU's only needed a heatsink in order to be cooled properly.. it's probably what saved yours as well.

I did the same thing with my ASUS board a couple of years ago, and it's still working. But I now run GKrellM on all my systems with temperature alarms set for CPU and HD. The HD temp warning, on my systems, are much more likely to trip, and the hot drives fail more easily then the CPU. They also seem to recover well when they cool down.

You might want to see if your BIOS will let you set temperature limits on your CPU, and actions to take when the limit is reached. Many modern BIOS let you do this, and it's good insurance.

Originally Posted by trickykid Does it have a heat sink as well? I remember the days when CPU's only needed a heatsink in order to be cooled properly.. it's probably what saved yours as well.

I think you make sense. It has a heatsink indeed. Just out of curiosity, how long can a processor run without heatsink and fan?

Originally Posted by PTrenholme hot drives fail more easily then the CPU.

That might be arguable

Typical harddrives are barely warm to the touch(7200 rpm and under) without any additional cooling.

Remove the heatsink off a cpu on the other hand..

well you wont want to put your finger on that.rc


To the OP..

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-hw1/

This article is useful and I use the techniques described in it on new computers I build or computers that fail, all the time.

In addition I use dban to test harddrives. Even though its for security, a good wipe can bring out errors that a normal format might not.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

And ofcourse the standard memtest.

http://www.memtest86.com/


Or I guess you could just play computer games until your computer crashes, but that might not be a fair test since thats what they're designed to do anyways.

Sweet dude!

Sorry, first natural reaction.

The CPU stepped itself down when it overheated, otherwise you would have fried it for sure.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/...pot/index.html

...........................

Yes Crito you are right, i did see a performance drop although negligible. Thanks for that link.

Originally Posted by shrikant.odugoudar I think you make sense. It has a heatsink indeed. Just out of curiosity, how long can a processor run without heatsink and fan?

well....
we recently changed a PSU on a celeron 2.6
we I took the lid off
I noticed that the lead to the cpu fan had never been connected
and the CPU was only being cooled by the heatsink
the computer was never used for more than about
4-5 hours at a time
but ran like this for about 2 years

It's not something I would do deliberately though
and needless to say
the technician who built the system
won't ever be doing any more work for me

floppy

Well I might as well tell my experience. I have (had, I schould say) 4+ year old cheapo PCchips Motherboard with a integrated processor that had an unusual sized heatsink and fan (wider than normal ones). Anyway, one day the fan decided to stop turning cause of dust and I didn't notice a thing cause I wasn't home most of the day, although my family kept using it. When I came home they said it beeped sometimes. I looked around in logs and stuff and if I recall correctly it looked all right. Then after a while the computer just shut off. Checking the CPU temp it was way to high and I noticed the CPU fan had stopped turning. As I mentioned before, the fan had an unusual size and I couldn't find one to replace it so I just cleaned it and oiled it and it ran fine, thinking I'd replace it later but... like most things... About a week ago, I woke up to see that the PC was off (I normally leave it on all night). I booted it and looked at the logs, they told me the PC had shut down a bit passed midnight. A few minutes later the thing went out, checking the CPU temp in the BIOS, it was 115 Celsius. Now I thing those sensors must have gotten damaged from the heat. I reboot and it doesn't boot anymore. Bought a new board and CPU and rejoiced at having an updated PC once again.
So that shows you that carelessness, mixed with dust and heat, can do real damage to your CPU.

Originally Posted by shrikant.odugoudar how long can a processor run without heatsink and fan?

Well it depends on the processor,

my (now scrapped) windows 3.1 box with an intel 486 processor never had a heatsink or fan attached!

my brand new AMD x2 4600 box with zalaman flower cooler and fan AND 2 case fans, still makes teh heatsink hot to the touch!