Intel and the 90 degree processor

I figured I'd share this story with everyone because I personally find it entertaining. This is why I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Intel fan...

My buddy has a 3.0 GHz P4 system I built for him. One day his stock fan made some nasty noises and died. We went to the nearest CompUSA and picked up a new fan. They didn't have any thermal compound, so we made a trip to Radio Shack and got some there.

Back at his house, I did all the right things. I pullled out the fan AND processor, cleaned the proc with a razor blade and q-tips/alchohol, and applied the thermal compound in the middle of the processor without spreading it (that adds air bubbles). I installed the new fan and everything was fine.

A couple weeks later he complained to me that his computer was randomly shutting off. I laughed and immediately realized his processor was probably overheating. I figured it was probably a bad piece of silicon or a bad motherboard thermistor. The next time I was at his house and it happened, I took a seat and checked the BIOS. It was 89 degrees celcius. Updating the BIOS didn't help.

I built the computer and I knew everything was installed OK, so I told him to it's either a bad reading or a bad processor. Either way, just use it till it dies and we'll drop in a new proc. I set up something to dump his BIOS readings to a text file in the mean time so I could read them later.

His processor ran at a minimum 72 celcius, and an average of 80. We did a cold startup once and watched it go from 35 to 65 in a manner of 3 minutes, BIOS only. When he gamed, it went up to about 80-85. Every now and then he'd push it just enough to make the mobo force an ACPI shutdown.

A couple weeks later when his computer didn't die, the shutdowns were becoming a nuisance. We ordered some silver-oxide thermal compound and promptly installed it. His computer maxed out at a chilly 58 degrees under load.

Apparantly the Radio Shack thermal compound must have been acting as more of an insulator than a thermal transfer compound. Anyway, this kid's P4 was running at 80 degrees for probably 2 months after all is said and done, and it's still running like a champ.

I just thought it was a fun story...