can you write an 'OS' that will fry a CPU?

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: buleyb

Originally posted by: DrPizza
rom a purely physics point of view, the "record" reached at Tom's hardware site sometime in the recent past was 80-something watts dissipated by the processor. Again, not being much of a hardware person, I'm treading in unfamiliar territory, but isn't the maximum power available to the motherboard just a fraction of the peak power output of a PSU? (maybe 1/2?) Thus, with a 400 Watt power supply, probably less than 200 watts are available to the motherboard.

Perhaps I'm just not understanding you here...but a 400watt power supply is rated to supply 400-ish Watts to the internal components, but if you actually needed all 400watts for the system, you'd be pulling more than 400 watts from the wall (480-520watts, just a guess though), because of the inefficiencies in switching power supplies...

anyone else to confirm this?


Oh, and the topic....I still claim bullsh*t, and have your magical friends try it or come here and discuss why they thing its possible.

Right, it supplies 400-ish watts to the internal components... but I didn't think any one component could use all 400 watts. That is, I thought the 400 watts was divided amongst the various outputs.

 

[buleyb]

Ahh, yes, the 400watts is a total across all the rails, each with their own maximum rating. Sorry for the misunderstanding