this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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I mean, for recent generations of hardware that's pretty excessive unless you have put in a considerable amount of cooling. Otherwise, if you're doing that to a part that's been rated for 95 degrees for example, which many current CPUs are, you're most likely just loosing out on value by not having picked a lower tier part that already runs cooler by design in the first place.
Generally, thermal stress, caused by frequent heating/cooling cycles also causes far more damage to hardware parts than sustained heat.
I definitely have more than the required cooling capacity on my PCs but I build with the goal of getting a minimum of 10 years of daily use. My 2010 build was used for gaming until 2017 at which point it was turned into a server and ran 24/7 until last year. My 2017 built was used daily until earlier this year and I expect to get at least another decade out of it as a workhorse.
I get that the parts are rated for a maximum of 95c and that cycling puts physical stress on parts, but both the magnitude and number of cycles are important there. A year of 25-65 is less physical stress than a year of 25-95. There is also the the fact that semiconductors just don't work as well at higher temperatures, they have a negative temperature coefficient and will conduct in the reverse direction the hotter they get, putting them under electrical stress.
I just find it surprising that running right up to the throttling limit is an "ok" practice.
So I usually swap my GPU every other generation after ~5 years or so, CPUs less frequently, but I always give the old parts to friends, family or colleagues and I Haven't heard of a single defect yet. So yeah, I just don't believe that heat related failure is something I should have to care about at all. Instead, I'd rather optimize my cooling capacity towards silent operation.
Other than that, the throttling limit already is the throttling limit where the hardware operates well at, not the limit which at which the lifespan gets noticeably affected. Those are much higher. This isn't like hardware from 20 years ago anymore.