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People at Tom’s Hardware Guide really like pushing computer hardware to the limits for testing. Last February, 2006, I have blogged about their use of Liquid Nitrogen as a processor coolant to overclock a Pentium 4 to 5.22GHz, and also their use of cooking oil as a coolant submerging the whole running motherboard in cooking oil spreading the heat and safe to do since cooking oil is not a conductor of electricity.

But this time, Tom’s Hardware Guide tries something else. Playing high graphics video games and taking off processor cooling. Some processors survive. Some processors burned and even burns out the motherboard as well. They did the test on Intel and AMD processors. I guess the people used to fixing their computers already know the result of which brand will burn up into smoke. Watch the video.

CPU – Cooling. – video powered by Metacafe

Interesting Results

• Intel Pentium 4/2000, Socket 423 with Intel 850 Chipset
  Temperature: 29^oC/84^oF
  Slowed down computer and CPU survived.
• Intel Pentium 3/1000, Socket 370 with Intel 815 EP Chipset
  Temperature: 38^oC/100^oF
  Application froze and CPU survived.
• AMD Athlon 1400, Socket 462 with Via KT133A Chipset
  Temperature: 370^oC/698^oF
  Application crash and CPU and motherboard up in smoke.
• AMD Palomino 1200, Socket 462 with VIA KT266 Chipset
  Temperature: 298^oC/568^oF
  Application crashes, thermal diode fails and CPU up in smoke

I find it interesting to know that the Intel processors heat just rose to near the temperature of having a fever. Fevers occur at 37^oC and above. While AMD processors are way beyond the boiling point of water at 1atm(760mmHG) atmospheric pressure, which is 100^oC.

So what processor will you buy from now on? I know what I will buy. Still an AMD! I am currently using an AMD Athlon 3000+ 64bit processor, simply because the price to performance ratio is still better to me than Intel processors. Although I did have a temperature problem before since AMD processors need a very large heatsink and processor fan, they can become very heavy too. And with an upright casing, my heatsink was being pulled by gravity causing it to have a very small space between the heatsink block and the processor. Thus heating up the processor. But the motherboard had a safety feature of killing the power when a certain temperature threshold is met and I believe all modern motherboards have this feature. But for the purposes of demonstration above, the people at THG disabled it. So with the motherboards of today, I am not worried of leaving my computer on without any fear of burning down the house. And the problem I had was solved with some thermal grease and tightening up the heatsink block.

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