As others have already mentioned, those machines would probably have died even without Prime95. The way I have always looked at it, Prime95 generally causes those types of (pre-existing) problems to manifest _before_ the warranty expires, rather than after. This feature is certainly not a Bad Thing :-)
Steve Harris -----Original Message----- From: Steve Elias <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Monday, January 14, 2002 1:58 PM 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 > _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
