Mo Cooling Mo Problems

[rsethc]

If you run a CPU with absolutely no cooling, will it outright die or will it just throttle really low down in terms of clock speed and barely perform? And if it dies, would that mean the component breaks, or would that mean it powers off and refuses to operate until the temperature falls in a safe range once again?

 

 

I have wondered about this for a long time but not seen much of anything about it. Probably because it is really dumb to actually try this, and there is no reason why anyone would do it even accidentally considering that so many CPUs come with stock coolers, and people who are building their own machines would probably know that cooling is important or otherwise they would be too confused to assemble everything else. But I am still curious about what would happen.

 

I would assume this depends heavily on the brand, model, and age of the CPU, but I am curious if there are any CPUs that would actually survive having no cooling system. Maybe server grade equipment that is meant to withstand a failure in the cooling system?

[OsuMasterz]

1 minute ago, rsethc said:

If you run a CPU with absolutely no cooling, will it outright die or will it just throttle really low down in terms of clock speed and barely perform? And if it dies, would that mean the component breaks, or would that mean it powers off and refuses to operate until the temperature falls in a safe range once again?

 

 

I have wondered about this for a long time but not seen much of anything about it. Probably because it is really dumb to actually try this, and there is no reason why anyone would do it even accidentally considering that so many CPUs come with stock coolers, and people who are building their own machines would probably know that cooling is important or otherwise they would be too confused to assemble everything else. But I am still curious about what would happen.

 

I would assume this depends heavily on the brand, model, and age of the CPU, but I am curious if there are any CPUs that would actually survive having no cooling system. Maybe server grade equipment that is meant to withstand a failure in the cooling system?

Your phone's CPU has no direct cooling lol

[shadowbyte]

1 minute ago, OsuMasterz said:

Your phone's CPU has no direct cooling lol

depends on the phone

the Galaxy S7 edge has a vapor chamber heatpipe iirc

[DildorTheDecent]

1 minute ago, rsethc said:

 

It'll get hotter and hotter, throttle and shut the system down.

 

CPU is just fine though. 

 

Tested years ago on an old Pentium D at a mighty 2.66GHz. 

[rsethc]

Good point but I suppose those mobile CPUs are meant for that purpose. I am primarily wondering about desktop CPUs that the engineers probably would not expect people to run without a cooler.

[rsethc]

3 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

It'll get hotter and hotter, throttle and shut the system down.

 

CPU is just fine though. 

 

Tested years ago on an old Pentium D at a mighty 2.66GHz. 

Sort of what I would expect, but I wonder if the latest Intel CPUs would continue functioning and just have highly degraded performance to keep the temperature barely acceptable, but without shutting off. Especially on machines with Xeons where an abrupt shutdown could spell disaster.

 

Also, you said it "shut the system down" - by that, did you mean it instructed the OS to shut down normally, or did it just stop everything kind of like what would happen if you yanked the power cable out?

 

Perhaps a consumer grade Intel CPU might perform a hard shut down while a Xeon might tell the OS to do a soft shut down, to avoid data loss???

[Shiv78]

The system will initiate shutdown once the temps exceed somewhere around ~110-120C IIRC to preserve components. That's why one time a power cable got stuck in my cooler and the whole system shut down and gave me a BSOD on startup. Moved the cable, no problems in 2+ years since then.

[DildorTheDecent]

7 hours ago, rsethc said:

Sort of what I would expect, but I wonder if the latest Intel CPUs would continue functioning and just have highly degraded performance to keep the temperature barely acceptable, but without shutting off. Especially on machines with Xeons where an abrupt shutdown could spell disaster.

 

Also, you said it "shut the system down" - by that, did you mean it instructed the OS to shut down normally, or did it just stop everything kind of like what would happen if you yanked the power cable out?

 

Perhaps a consumer grade Intel CPU might perform a hard shut down while a Xeon might tell the OS to do a soft shut down, to avoid data loss???

Modern CPUs do the same thing. 

 

Also shut down just means it powers off. OS or not it just turns off.