Re: heat dissipation

[Jonathan Berry <jberry@bbs.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca>]

The debate has been whether it is better for a machine with a
powerful processor to have a warm (hot) case, or if having a cooler
case inevitably means that the heat is retained in the vicinity of
the processor and thereby damages the chips.  Which signifies the
better engineering?

There is another consideration.  Most of us aren't generally using
number-crunching apps (for example, to work out the table bases for
all 5-piece chess endgames--that could take weeks of continuous
calculation) on our laptop.  In word processing, for example, the
computer must be simply waiting for a keystroke 99.9% of the time
(remember, word processors that ran as fast as you could type were
available on 4.77 MHz 8088s).  While it is waiting, the processor's
clock could be slowed down (unless it has a governor on it that
prevents its clock speed from being changed !?) and it would thus
draw less power.

So a cool case *could* be a sign of *better* engineering.

Jonathan Berry