I've been running utterly stable for about 5 months with a stock-clocked 4770 (Noctua DH14U in an FT02). Recently I've been running a VERY CPU-intensive process for LONG periods (overnight) and I noticed that this runs the CPU at/near its thermal limits (bouncing off Tj max at 100 degrees). Under 'normal' load I get core temps around 50-60 degrees (when running a bunch of active VMs and running parallel compilations etc.), so this load profile is extraordinary (its an aggressively multi-threaded, aggressively utilization-optimizing Mont Caro Tree Search general game player).
As of last Friday my system became unstable, and now hard-hangs (no interrupts - so no mouse movement, no response to Ctrl-alt-del, only power cycle shifts it [the display freezes rather than breaks up so the GPU is fine), typically after about 20 minutes of high-load.
So, a few questions:
1) Is it possible (probable) that running things near the thermal max for an extended period has caused physical damage to the CPU? (isn't that what auto-throttling is supposed to prevent?)
2) Given that it is unstable at load, but not when lightly loaded, what does that tell us about the nature of the damage? (i.e. - is it likely that I can avoid it by lowering load in some [reasonable] way)?
3) Can I be certain the damage is to the CPU? If so should I consider replacing it? If so what steps should I take to prevent a re-occurance with a new CPU if I can't rely on the auto-throttling (i.e. - what is a safe level below the throttle-trigger level)?
4) Related to (2) and (3) is there some way to lower the core temp the CPU auto-throttles at (I can't seem to see one in my BIOS)
As of last Friday my system became unstable, and now hard-hangs (no interrupts - so no mouse movement, no response to Ctrl-alt-del, only power cycle shifts it [the display freezes rather than breaks up so the GPU is fine), typically after about 20 minutes of high-load.
So, a few questions:
1) Is it possible (probable) that running things near the thermal max for an extended period has caused physical damage to the CPU? (isn't that what auto-throttling is supposed to prevent?)
2) Given that it is unstable at load, but not when lightly loaded, what does that tell us about the nature of the damage? (i.e. - is it likely that I can avoid it by lowering load in some [reasonable] way)?
3) Can I be certain the damage is to the CPU? If so should I consider replacing it? If so what steps should I take to prevent a re-occurance with a new CPU if I can't rely on the auto-throttling (i.e. - what is a safe level below the throttle-trigger level)?
4) Related to (2) and (3) is there some way to lower the core temp the CPU auto-throttles at (I can't seem to see one in my BIOS)