Discussion CPU at 100 degrees under load for a year and it's perfectly fine?

[theheadshotdude]

The CPU is an Athlon X4 860k, as of right now it's sitting in a box doing nothing, but while I was using it as my main gaming procesor, It didn't have any thermal paste on it, and the temps showed with 80 degrees on idle and 100 while under load. I used HWmonitor and it shows a stabe 30-50 degree temp for my new procesor with thermal paste so i suppose the temps were correct. If they were however, since my cpu was running without any thermal paste for almost a year (genuine mistake on my part), that would mean it was at a 100 degrees almost all day for a year! I didn't notice any issues what so ever during that period which is pretty weird to me. Would it have been damaged some time later?

 

[laviniuc]

yes. you're lucky it ran as long as it did. you should have noticed it decreasing speed when running that hot.

 

[Bearmann]

Paste! We don't need no stinkin" paste!!!

That's a good chip. Probably would have overcocked to 6.5 with a little goo under there. I'll buy it from you .....................................for a dollar

 

[geofelt]

Likely, when you ran with no paste, it was throttling like mad to protect itself.
I doubt that the 80 and 100c temperatures were legit unless they were in Fahrenheit