AMD's don't heat up as much as NetBurst based Intel processors, but sometimes things happen. If your heatsink fan goes down, at least Intel processors will automatically shut off to cool down and let you know something is wrong. AMD processors lack these types of things, which then means if you heatsink fan goes down, the only way you can tell is if you have some temperature sensor/probe or some program to let you know. Otherwise you can kiss it goodbye.