alt Hacker NewsOuch, that poor die :(
I remember it well, back in the very early 2000s, when my own Athlon XP 1800+ (an AGOIA stepping, I do know that for sure :D) met its untimely end at the hands of a device that was designed to prevent the exact misfortune that killed its sister CPU as seen in this submission!
The fragile silicon was a problem the enthusiast/PC-builder community was very aware of, and the market responded with "spacer" kits you could buy for a few $$$ that were cut from solid sheets of thin copper. These spacers would carefully wrap around all the little bumps on the CPU's upper side, and provide a level plane for the heatsink to rest upon, while still establishing direct contact with the die that it was supposed to cool down. So there was, in theory, decidedly less of a chance of killing your CPU by having the heatsink meet it in an unfortunate angle, or something to that effect.
Unfortunately, the spacer that I had bought turned out to be just a wee little bit too thick, and, despite thermal paste (Arctic Silver!), the CPU did not in fact make contact with the heatsink (something shiny from Thermalright or Zalman, I think?) at all, which killed it instantly as soon as I powered up the rig for the first time. That's what it was like back in the days, when we got to school walking ten miles uphill (both ways) barefoot in deep snow.
I had to put in some overtime at the small PC shop I worked after school back then, to afford a measly Duron 800 as its replacement. And still they keep claiming that time heals all wounds... ;)
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Yup, I killed an Athlon XP in a ridiculously (over-)expensive Voodoo Gaming computer in a similar fashion while updating the HSF, as careful as I was. I've been nervous and anxious every time I update a chip or hear sink ever since even though it's a MUCH quieter affair nowadays...
Speaking of uphill every way, I also remember upgrading to a Alpha PAL screaming 6500rpm++ CPU fan+heatsink that sounded like a mix of jet engine or broken vacuum cleaner. Ridiculously loud - this was a few months before we as a society figured out that larger fans spinning more slowly were all around better for everyone :). I think it was something tiny like 60mm diameter industrial fan.
I accidentally bent some of the pins on mine but I was able to carefully bend them back and luckily it booted. Computer building on those days was much more unfriendly. I remember hearing tons of horror stories of water cooling including leaks and the cpu overheating and dying that kept me far away from it until more recently.