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Subject: Re: Some comments

Author: Wayne Lowrance

Date: 06:27:49 03/29/02

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On March 29, 2002 at 01:27:42, Slater Wold wrote:

>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.)


Would you please elaborate on this. I don"t understand what you mean, or the
operating principle.
Thanks
Wayne
>
>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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