[mk_stjames]

This was my first question as well- I thought it had been a long, long time since you could fry a CPU by taking away the heatsink.

As in... what, AMD K6 / early Pentium 4 days was the last time I remember hearing about cpu cooler failing and frying a cpu?

[dwood_dev]

Athlon era when AMD had no IHS but Intel had one. Intel also had thermal controls that AMD lacked.

I once worked on a piece of equipment that was running awful slow. The CPU was just not budging from its base clock of 700Mhz. As I was removing the stock Intel cooler, I noticed it wasn't seated fully. Once I removed it and looked I saw a perfectly clean CPU with no residue. I looked at the HSF, the original thermal paste was in pristine condition.

I remounted the HSF and it worked great. It ran 100% throttled for seven years before I touched it.

[userbinator]

This infamous video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06MYYB9bl70

[p_l]

K6 depended on motherboard having thermal sensors - and which had to properly attach to the CPU in the first place.

Built-in thermal sensing came later.

[Twirrim]

It was some time around then. I remember AMD being late to it vs Intel.

[mook]

That was SpeedStep? By the time AMD got to it it was just sort of expected and didn't have a fancy name, as far as I know.

Or maybe I'm thinking of something else entirely…

[ChoGGi]

AMD's fancy name was PowerNow! or Cool'n'Quiet.