as opposed to the cpu fan.
undoubtedly some of the increased (40W) power consumption from prime95 is
due to the CPU fan running. it's possible that running your
PC in a very cold garage or basement would result in less power consumption since the ambient temp would require less cpu fan operation. additionally
it's possible that running it without a case on the computer would do the same.
in the past when a new toshiba laptop fan failed (triggered by prime95 forcing
it to run all the time), i was able to continue prime hunting by placing
the laptop in our absurdly cold garage. running it indoors resulted in
it automatically shutting down due to over-temperature condition.
on many PCs, the CPU fan needn't run while the PC is idling. but with prime95 operating, the cpu fan has to run often on my AMD 2.3Ghz PC - 50% duty cycle, on for 2 minutes, off for 3 minutes. on my intel P4 PCs the cpu fan will be maxxed if prime95 is running, 100% duty cycle...
regarding whether prime95 can cause a partition failure, yes, of course it can. possible mechanisms for this have been explained by others. how does it go, a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the globe...
so of course prime95 can cause *anything* to happen! what will happen when a 10 Million digit prime is discovered, the mere dispersal of an EFF prize, or perhaps a result like what occurred at the end of the short story _the nine billion names of God_. http://www.geocities.com/rojodos/docs/9000000000.htm /e
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