RE: How to cool my cpu temperature?

["Seth Goodman" <sethg@goodmanassociates.com>]

Surachai Locharoen wrote on Saturday, January 06, 2007 12:42 AM -0600:

> polling_interval was set to 2, I changed this to 30 and observed that
> sometimes the CPU temp spiked at 102, 105, 107 but for no more than 1
> second then immediately dropped back to sub-100. No instability, so
> could be a glitch?   
> 
> Sometimes Linux will hit 100+ on 30 seconds and halt.

If the readings of around 100 degrees C are accurate, this is too hot for
a processor die.  While you can run power semiconductors that hot and
still achieve acceptable reliability, this is not reasonable for a
package like a processor.  The primary failure mode is bond wires
opening, and it is strongly temperature dependent.  A typical power
device has 3 bond wires, while a processor has several hundred, so the
overall failure rate for this type of package gets too high at a much
lower temperature.

-- 
Seth Goodman