| > literally burning out my work laptop Is there any actual evidence for running a CPU near its thermal ceiling causing premature failure vs a cpu running at a 10-20c lower temp? When I hear people saying things like “my PC is dying”, this is usually due to thermal throttling from dust buildup or malware running causing excessive CPU usage. It’s not like the CPU is getting crispy around the edges and parts of it stop working so only a smaller portion is still available to do work or something. There seems to be a lot of conjecture out there about the longevity of a CPU vs heat, but I’m wondering if this has ever been actually studied in a scientific way. I understand that electromigration is real, and it could e.g. cause a trace to eventually blow out. This is the closest thing to a real scientific explanation that I could find https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/5l3ufj/is_there_a... but it still doesn’t go into why / how / the physical mechanics of it. https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/cpu-electromigration... Also attempts to explore this in a fairly scientific manner, but it’s focused on over-volting and overclocking vs normal (especially mobile, where CPU voltages tend to be less tweakable) operation. TL;DR In my experience, CPU/GPU temps don’t matter as long as they are not causing throttling. Running within a few degrees of the thermal limit (Tjunction max ) 24x7 for years won’t affect the longevity of a CPU/GPU in any functional way, and won’t cause slowdowns, only failure, possibly of a subsystem like USB or other on-die subsystems. If anyone has anything showing otherwise, please share it! |