Author: Slater Wold
Date: 22:27:42 03/28/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 28, 2002 at 20:32:40, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >Some things come to mind, thinking a little more about this. > >First is electromigration. When current goes through circuits, the paths are >eroded by miniscule amounts. This basically only matters within dense chips like >microprocessors, where the connections are only a few hundred molecules wide. >The point is that these chips wear out when you use them, but they're still >designed/manufactured for 10+ years of continuous use, so it doesn't really >matter. The problem is when you start overclocking and upping the current >through the chips--some people claim that with high current, CPUs can be >destroyed because of electromigration within 2 years. Again, not a problem if >you don't overclock. > >The only other parts of a computer that wear out are the capacitors and the >moving parts, i.e., the fans and hard drive. Old capacitors leak, but I don't >know how usage patterns affect this leakage. I also don't know if fans wear out >faster if they're left on or if they're cycled on and off. I know that hard >drives used to wear when they were turned on and off, but now that we have >autoparking heads and so forth, I don't think that's an issue. Laptop >power-saving software is constantly turning hard drives on and off, and I >haven't heard complains frop laptop users about hard drive lifespans. > >Really, I don't think it matters. I know people who leave their computers on all >day and I know other people who turn theirs on and off many times per day, and >the compuers all last a darn long time. > >-Tom When I bought my AMD 2x1.53Ghz, my first benches were my *slowest*. Of course, I booted up these CPU's for the first time ever, and went straight to the benchmarks. They were the slowest I've ever got. 2 hours later the benches were 3% higher, constantly. Therefore, that would blow that theory right outta the water. No CPU is cooler than one that's never been used before. :D Also, I just looked, and my computer has been running for > 20 days. The benches are within .5% of my benches I ran 12 hours after getting the system. If you have a memory leak (best way to tell is to check resources, open program, use program, close program, and then check resources) your system performance is of course going to degrade *very* fast. (CM used to have a pretty bad leak.) I have no idea what lead this guy to write such a bogus article, but it's pretty silly. When I turn on my system, my CPU's almost immediatly jump to 20 C or so, and then never go above about 45 C (after 18 hours of running WAC). 25 C is *not* enough heat to cause *any* kind of problems. In *any* computer.
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