I'd wager that in most of those instances, the computer would have died without Prime95's help.
Faulty CPU fans in particular... whether they conk out after a short while or eventually, a bad fan is a ticking time bomb. Prime95 may have shortened the life span a bit, but it was doomed. :) Any machine that lacks proper ventilation and allows excess CPU heat to affect the hard drive is buggy design if you ask me. I have a 1GHz IBM laptop that I run Prime95 on 24/7 and while the thing can get hot if I actually place it on my lap, I've had nary a problem except on a couple occasions when I inadvertently blocked the inflow air vent and the thing did overheat. When it did that, it just shut itself down. Things to look for on any computer, Prime95 running or not, are noisy cpu/case fans or fans that don't spin at all. And if you have thermal monitoring, pay attention to it. Hard drives nowadays almost all have SMART on them, so find a program that can read those stats and see if your drive is giving out warnings. Many vendors include software for monitoring your system health (I know HP and Compaq do, and I think IBM does too but I haven't looked). There are 3rd party programs for all that as well. And of course, overclocking is pushing the limits anyway, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised to find that overclocking may ruin a CPU. I do find it curious that the thermal protection on your P4 didn't kick in, but perhaps your computer's BIOS had some default settings disabling that? Or it had been disabled? I dunno... I don't have a P4 machine (yet), so I can't say. :) In short, I've killed many machines in my life... CPU fans that stopped working and thus frying the processor, or doing silly things like plugging a 486 in the wrong way, etc. And of all the machines I've fried, NONE were running Prime95. Heck, I guess I'd have to say that running Prime95 on a machine has actually brought me better luck with them than without. :) Aaron > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:mersenne-invalid- > [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Steve Elias > Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 11:45 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Mersenne: slaying cpus with prime95 > > > here are some instances where i have damaged computers > by (capriciously?) running prime95! > > 1 - i just got my wife's toshiba laptop back from toshiba warranty > service. running prime95 for ~6 months on it caused the fan to die, > and then the laptop would overheat & shutdown even without prime95 > running. apparently the heat caused lots of disk badblocks too. > > 2 - my manager at work here had a thinkpad. he ran prime95 despite my > worry that it was very "tough" on laptops. within a few months his > harddrive failed - possibly due to months of excess heat... :| this > could be considered a classic Dilbertian CLM (career limiting move) on > my part, but no worry since my manager is super-cool. > > 3 - i also ran the prime95 app for a year or so on an ancient cyrix > p120+ which had a cpu-fan that stopped. after a couple months of > no-cpu-fan, that cpu died completely... > > 4 - i bought a 2Ghz P4 recently. despite initial worries that it was > running too hot (70 C) because fan was too slow (2800 rpm), i got > adventurous and clocked the cpu at 2.1 Ghz for a day. weeks later the > machine started acting very badly (motherboard cpu temp alarm caused > shutdown @ 90 C even without prime95 running). so i returned it to > the vendor. they claimed that my overclocking it broke the P4, and > that the top of the cpu was actually burnt/blackened from the heat. > this is counter to my belief that improper fan/heatsink was the cause, > but i can't prove it. also it runs counter to what i've read here & > elsewhere about the thermal-protection built into P4s 1.7Ghz or > faster. they are returning the P4 to intel to see if Intel will > replace it for free, but in the meantime i have to pay for a new cpu! > (i'm picking 1.8Ghz this time.) > > so far my count is "4" for computers i've damaged with the help of the > the prime95 application. but i'll keep running it because it is the > coolest application around (in a hot way). > > /eli _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
