| Thermal Damage is the inevitable killer of all integrated circuit boards. PC Mainboards are no different.
Think back to high school physics... when metal gets hot, it expends. When it cools, it contracts. Now, think about a metal hander that you would bend back and forth eventually snapping it in two. Remember burning your fingers eventually?
This is basically what's going on in a circuit board when you cycle a machine on and off (only in the opposite order). The board heats up due to the power flow and the metal pathways embedded in the board expand. Look at the board, there are a million corners along those paths. They want to expand, stretch, straighten out when heat is applied. Then you shut the machine off and they cool and want to retract back to their original positions. That's the hanger wiggling I was telling you about.
Eventually, just like a hanger, they will separate and that's thermal damage.
It can happen in the mainboard, a card, even in a chip on the board.
Be REALLY aware of this kind of damage in today's high end video cards... they generate a tremendous amout of heat and can be easily damaged by it. Monitors too, are damaged in the same way. Life support equipment, car computers, coffe pots... all the same.
That's why the local elecronics store only offers a 2 - 3 year manufacturers warranty on most household electronics like TVs, Stereos and Radios... because they know just about how long it takes for thermal damage to occur.
So yes, overheating your CPU and damage the board by either time or taking a dtat path to a temp that exceeds its structural intergrity as described above.
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