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Will heat damage CPU's without destroying them?

C

Citizen _insane

Gawd
Joined
May 2, 2006
Messages
565
I ask because I came home yesterday to a blown water pump. My waterblocks were too hot to touch and I immidiately shut off the computer. I rebooted about 10 sec later with no problems, entered the BIOS and checked temps....72 and 69!! NOT GOOD :eek: I was wondering if this could have damaged the CPU's. They still post, they still run, but I wonder if the overheating could have made them less stable (perminantly) or possibly reduce their overclockability.

The processors are Prestonia Xeons: 3.06Ghz, 533fsb at stock speed.
 
I think they can handle 80s, but I don't know for certain.
 
remember they were showing 69/72 in BIOS after being allowed to cool for about 30 sec. I worry that they did reach 80 degrees while I wasn't there.
 
after a long enough time, your processors will begin to throttle, keeping your processor from being damaged. So if it was at 80C for a long time, most likely, your processor throttled down to try to keep the temperatures down (however far the processor felt it had to push it's clocks down to keep the processor cool enough from dying). Your processor should be fine, just put a working waterblock on it and I think you're good. If you do experience lag of some sort or lessened overclock, I might conclud that maybe your processor may be damaged. Try doing a CPU intensive task or something to double check once you get another heatsink.
 
I have never experienced a CPU get damaged like that. They seem to be 100% working order, or broken, so, if you could still post and boot, you are good to go.
 
well....I'm at work....but I do have a brand new pump and I'm going to locate some tygon tubing today and hopefully this weekend I'll have my setup perfected. Man, water is such a pain in the ass :rolleyes:
 
Yeah StealthyFish is right. When processors reach a certain temperature, they begin to throttle so the temps dont get any hire and damage the processor. I would say everything will be ok. I would run Prime95 or something along those lines and see if it can pass the tests for a 24 hour period.
 
techinically electromigration could be more likely at higher temps, which could shorten the life of your CPU.

But usually a CPU either works or doesn't work. If its overclocked & not stable you need to back down the overclock and/or cool it better.

Temporary overheating like your situation, the processors will throttle.
Now if you had an older AMD chip, you'd be shit out of luck they both would have fried, and the magic smoke would have escaped which make all electronica gadgets work.
 
Since it is still running now, you are most likely fine. The lower temperature is needed to run at high frequency. Having higher temperature (less than 110C) means that you may not reach high frequency but will not damage the CPU.
 
Don't worry your processor is fine. Intel and AMD has incoporated in their design to turn off the PC automatically once it reach a threshold temperature. Higher than normal operating temperature only reduce performance with a decreased clock speed but once its cool enough it will return back to its specified clock speed.
 
NulloModo said:
I have never experienced a CPU get damaged like that. They seem to be 100% working order, or broken, so, if you could still post and boot, you are good to go.
Click to expand...

Pretty much, although as others have said, prolonged abuse will cause premature death. Then again, this was only for a few hours. Do you have any idea how long CPUs get abused by inadequate cooling or dirtyness in OEM machines before they finally die? I wouldn't worry much about your mishap.
 
Bah, those older CPUs are tough as nails. I ran F@H on a 2.6 Northwood for months at 85C. I put better cooling on the processor once I found out, but it is still chugging away today, perfectly fine. Don't worry about it.
 
You're fine. The CPU should be spec'd up to at least 100C, and at that temp you'd get steam in your tubes, which pressurizes the system and something would blow. Since you didn't come back to a fried and wet system, you didn't hit 100C.

In the future, you should do what I do to protect against this situation. In my BIOS I set an emergency shutoff temp at 80C for the CPU. One time, my pump failed to start. I should have noticed that the system was very quiet, and that it started running slowly. But I didn't care. Needless to say, I quickly figured things out when it shut itself off before it created steam.
 
its been my experience that this sort of thing leaves the processor "battle tested." I toasted a cpu above 200 degreese (almost 300) without a heatsink / fan. the board fried, but the chip was just fine. 6 years later it still works. It was a 366MHz celeron, and its currently running at 575MHz and I think it just killed off the weaker transistors, because its at stock voltage while the other takes an extra .1 volts.
 
my bios doesn't have a setting for shutting down the computer when it overheats (I wish it did) but I have it set so that above 80 degrees it throttles down to 25% speed. I replaced the pump with a via aqua 1300 and now I'm running MUCH better.
 
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