Yesterday I heard a small thud from inside my PC. Stupidly, I ignored it - largely because I wanted to fit in a game of dota before lectures and I was short on time. It was only when I got to the pick screen and noticed my FPS was tanking to <30 that I realised I needed to turn off my PC because something was wrong. So, I quit the game, and shut down my computer (using the start menu, not even rapidly unplugging it from the wall like I should have done).
I opened up my computer to find the CPU heatsink/fan had fallen off and was lying at the bottom of the case. Meaning that my CPU had been operating for 2-3 minutes without a heatsink. And not idle either - in a game.
After googling I realised I couldn't put the fan back on straight away because I needed to buy more thermal paste. And after spending time researching the potential consequences of the mishap I read in a lot of places that a CPU will fry itself in ten seconds without a heatsink.
Naturally I was extremely worried about the damage I had potentially done to my three month old CPU. But I was pretty sceptical of the whole ten second cook notion, since I had just witnessed my own CPU run for almost 200 seconds under fairly heavy load with no heatsink, without even thermtrip kicking in, never mind any actual frying.
Every single thread I've visited overwhelmingly agrees that running a CPU with no heatsink, even just loading the BIOS, is likely to cause damage within mere seconds. Arctic silver says "A modern high performance CPU can be permanently damaged in less than 10 seconds without
proper cooling".
But this clearly wasn't the case at all for my CPU, which still works perfectly after minutes with no heatsink. So what is the truth? Is the frying thing a myth? Is everyone being extremely overcautious about never ever ever testing a CPU without a heatsink? Do Haswell Refresh processors just run amazingly cold even with no cooling? Any input would be appreciated!
TL/DR: My CPU ran in-game for 3 minutes with no heatsink and works perfectly. Is "a CPU will fry itself in ten seconds" a complete myth?
I opened up my computer to find the CPU heatsink/fan had fallen off and was lying at the bottom of the case. Meaning that my CPU had been operating for 2-3 minutes without a heatsink. And not idle either - in a game.
After googling I realised I couldn't put the fan back on straight away because I needed to buy more thermal paste. And after spending time researching the potential consequences of the mishap I read in a lot of places that a CPU will fry itself in ten seconds without a heatsink.
Naturally I was extremely worried about the damage I had potentially done to my three month old CPU. But I was pretty sceptical of the whole ten second cook notion, since I had just witnessed my own CPU run for almost 200 seconds under fairly heavy load with no heatsink, without even thermtrip kicking in, never mind any actual frying.
Every single thread I've visited overwhelmingly agrees that running a CPU with no heatsink, even just loading the BIOS, is likely to cause damage within mere seconds. Arctic silver says "A modern high performance CPU can be permanently damaged in less than 10 seconds without
proper cooling".
But this clearly wasn't the case at all for my CPU, which still works perfectly after minutes with no heatsink. So what is the truth? Is the frying thing a myth? Is everyone being extremely overcautious about never ever ever testing a CPU without a heatsink? Do Haswell Refresh processors just run amazingly cold even with no cooling? Any input would be appreciated!
TL/DR: My CPU ran in-game for 3 minutes with no heatsink and works perfectly. Is "a CPU will fry itself in ten seconds" a complete myth?