If Prescotts can handle immense heat i wonder why 4 of ours died over a 6 month period? They were early 775 versions, forget what model but 3Ghz 1mb cache. Over last yrs summer they hit 80C+ load easily and eventually 4 chips out of 25 died. This was all at stock speed and stock OEM configurations (RM) The mainboards were fine and we replaced with Celeron D cpus. Later Athlon cpus were not fragile at all, thats since the early Duron and Thunderbirds you're talking about, and that was only physically, they could take a good bit of heat as well. The only cpus i've seen die over time are Northwood PIVs due to SNDS and Prescotts due to roasting to death on the stock intel cooler, this is due a lot to RM sticking them in low profile MATX cases which are the noisest OEM PCs i've ever heard in my life, even browsing the internet results in the fans taking off. Also, about the heat Prescott produces, i've had to diagnose motherboard death on a few client rigs due to the Prescott burning them to death, this was on S478 mostly as that platform just was'nt able to cope properly, especially overclocked with Prescotts, so letting it get hot may not affect the cpu but you're not doing the motherboard and its components any favours. The heat output was just a byproduct of gate leakage etc.. i don't think the Prescotts were 'designed' to run hot and as seen, some have suffered due to that.
Thank god for the Core 2 design.
