Dean;
With a AMD athlon processor, don't boot without a good
heatsink properly installed.
You could get away with it on older processors, but not the athlons.
Pentium IIIs and 4s seem to have some form of thermal heat protection
built in as they will shut down when overheated without damage.
This is one real advantage to the Intel processors, although I use
mostly AMDs now because of price and performance.

Jun Qian is right, even 5 seconds on an athlon will heat the processor so
hot
you can't touch it without getting burned.
30 seconds and there would be a good chance of permanent damage to the CPU
and possibly the mobo too.
If you have the bandwidth there is a 9mb video on tomshardware.com
that graphically demonstrates this - find the link on this page:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/heatvideo-05.html

<>< Larry Fisk
         Fisk Computers
           Fruitvale, Idaho
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dean Kukral" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 6:46 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Will cpu fry w/o fan?


> I have a known good cpu that I would like to
> try in place of the current one, but the cooling
> fan is very difficult to attach.  I would like to
> run the cpu long enough to see if it goes thru
> the regular boot process.
> I would prefer to do this without the cooling
> fan, i.e. run the computer for a couple of
> minutes with no cooling fan.
> Am I in danger of frying the cpu in that short
> of time?

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