how long can an AMD 2100+ CPU run on just a HS without a fan?

[dxkj]

Interesting situation, as I was rewiring all of the inside of my case the other day (fans etc) I neglected to plug my vantec turbo back in... I turned on the computer, fired up the fans, and smiled as I realized they were working fine.... I showed my fiancee and explained what I had done, etc, and after leaving the computer on for a good 30 seconds I turned it off, 2 mins later when checking all my connections I realized I hadnt had the tornado on my HS slk 800, plugged in, I was like

DOH


anyway the heat sink had barely gotten warm, and everything works perfectly, just curious, ideally the HS would have to reach a set temperature before damage to the core occurred right?

 

[Agamar]

Well, I suppose if your case fans were working good, and you had a large chunk of metal for a heat sink, then your CPU fan wouldn't be needed as much.....Still wouldn't want to test it again though 🙂

 

[gnawrot]

Lucky you. Probably another minute and your CPU and mobo would be dead.

 

[Gerbil333]

It'll be fine. Sometime in early January, the fan on my other rig (XP 1600+ on a KT266 mobo) failed. It was my blonde sister's computer, so of course she didn't notice the 40dB difference in sound that resulted from the 7000 rpm fan not spinning 😛 Here's what happened:

I went to do something on her computer at about 8pm (it'd been on and fanless since about 10am), and I immediatelly noticed how quiet it sounded. I opened up PC Alert III to check the fan's speed (the MSI K7T266 Pro-RAID monitoring program it usees)...CPU Fan: 0 rpm......CPU Temp: 89C...and it'd been IDLING for over an hour! My sister had played GTA3, surfed, and run Winamp for many hours earlier in the day. It locked up ONCE in GTA3, but ran fine otherwise. I was like :-0 and instead of shutting it down, I quickly flipped the switch on the PS and unplugged it.

I opened the case up and I could feel the heat radiating off of the CPU's heatsink from several inches away! I touched the hsf...OW! The temp sensor was correct; that thing really was 90C! So, I got out a large fan and positioned it towards the CPU socket for about 10 minutes. Once the heatsink was touchable, I removed it and the CPU to check for damage. To my surprise, there was no visible damage even though the system had run for roughly 10 hours with no CPU fan!

I applied AS3, reseated everything, fixed the bad fan, and turned it on. It surprised me once more -- it BOOTED! I ran stability tests for about 4 hours and it worked perfectly. I immediatelly ordered a new Chieftec server tower and an Enermax 350W PSU for the system (the case and PSU it had before were the reason the fan failed...long explanation).

That computer and CPU are still running at this very moment, but in a much better case and PSU.

The CPU hsf was a 100% copper Dynatron heatsink with a 6800rpm fan (but minus the fan). I'm very surprised the CPU survived. It surely went over 95C when my sister was playing GTA3, perhaps even higher! It's still going and hasn't crashed yet 🙂

Summary: Since you were able to touch your heatsink, your CPU will definatelly be fine. My 1600+ ran for over 10 hours without a fan (at about 90C+), and I couldn't touch the heatsink without burning myself...it survived 😛

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: gnawrot
Lucky you. Probably another minute and your CPU and mobo would be dead.

The 8RDA+ will cut power to the CPU if it overheats. That's typical of most boards from KT333 chipsets onwards, as well as some from before, like the A7N266-VM. And when they do shut down, they don't waste time... if you were to start up an A7N266-VM with the heatsink off the CPU, it would turn itself off in under a second, for instance. 😀