Can a 7 days full 100% CPU load "burn-in" / "stress test" damage a modern notebook? [duplicate]

Can damage? Yes. Should damage? Usually not. It will reduce the lifetime though, and I do not see any benefit of doing such an extreme burn-in for workstations or even laptops - you'd get nearly all of the benefits by running the same tests for 10-30 minutes, instead of 150 hours.

When you use a device, there's wear and tear. Lifetime of components is not infinite - many components die after a few years of normal use (some even after a few months) even though they should last forever.

There are some things to consider in your case:

• Some Notebooks are quite simply not designed to run continuously at maximum load for ~150 hours straight. For most laptops, the cooling can not keep up with running the system at max load, so when the temperature increases the system reduces max speed to protect itself from overheating. That means the system will run at full speed, get hot, throttle, get cooler, release the throttle, get hot, throttle, get cooler, et cetera. The frequency and the severity of these temperature changes depend on the laptop. This will shorten the lifetime of components.
• Anything with moving parts, such as hard disks, will degrade by being used.
• SSDs, despite having no moving parts, have limited lifetime based on how many writes are made on the disk.

Engineering always involves compromises. When designing a PC, one goal is to keep costs for production down while also keeping costs for warranty repairs/replacements down. This involves designing for the most likely usage scenarios. Unlike laptops, servers can be expected to run under load 24/7, which is why they are designed to last longer than consumer desktops and laptops. That increases their cost (just compare prices of server hard disks to those of consumer hard disks).

There are several products which will do a better and more efficient job of stress testing new hardware than simply running the CPU. Overclockers use these tools to test out how much they can overclock various pieces of hardware before the system becomes unstable. They do not run the software for a week, a few minutes will usually reveal a problem, maybe an hour if you want to really be sure.

• PassMark BurnInTest
• Prime95
• NovaBench
• 3DMark
• PCMark

I looked up some information on the brominated flame retardants the OP mentions, particularly Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs), and there is concern about their bio accumulation. The CDC has a nice fact sheet about them. Note that the section entitled "What are the routes of exposure and the health effects of PBDE and PBB?" does not mention vapors from electronics. It does state that "PBDEs may enter the environment through emissions from manufacturing processes, volatilization from various products that contain PBDEs, recycling wastes and leach from waste disposal sites" citing ATSDR 2004. ATSDR's fact sheet on PBDEs in "How might I be exposed to PBDEs?" states these ways you might be exposed to PBDEs.

• The concentrations of PBDEs in human blood, breast milk, and body fat indicate that most people are exposed to low levels of PBDEs.
• You may be exposed to PBDEs from eating foods or breathing air contaminated with PBDEs.
• Workers involved in the manufacture of PBDEs or products that contain PBDEs may be exposed to higher levels than usual.
• Occupational exposure can also occur in people who work in enclosed spaces where PBDE-containing products are repaired or recycled.

In short, unless you're working directly with PBDEs and eWaste you're not going to be exposed any more than you already are.

Be sure not to confuse PBBs, which have been shown to be probably cancerous and have been banned since the 70s, with PBDEs which are still being studied and have only been partially banned.

As for "burning off" these problems, I would need a citation on that from a reputable study that A) it's even a problem to begin with and B) that running a laptop hot does anything to solve the problem. As you can see in the CDC fact sheet, the boiling point for all PBDEs is over 300C. Your CPU is not going to get much over 80C.

UPDATE @Fuhrmanator found an actual study about the chemicals coming out of computers and printers! Before you freak out about all the pretty graphs and scary chemical names, note that this is one study on a few computers and printers which is a sample size too small to draw general conclusions.

The study's conclusions about having computers and printers in a small (20m^3) room is "it's probably ok, but might accumulate, and we need more data". The relevant points are...

• "In almost all cases the computer and printer emissions give rise to concentrations well below guideline levels"
• "Formaldehyde emissions from computers and dibutylphthalate emissions from printers are possible exceptions—emissions are estimated to come close to or exceed the guideline limits"

Also note that printers are way worse than computers, laser printers worst of all.

And the report does conclude that "'Aging' of computers led to a reduction in chemical emissions". While it doesn't say anything about running at 100% CPU, running it for a couple days in a well ventilated place before putting it into cramped quarters might help.

The 7-day burn-in should not damage your laptop and if it does, it was defective in the first place. My laptop has been computing all sorts of distributed computing projects under BOINC for well over 7 years without any issues, and the CPU temperature has been between 70-80°C the whole time.

In fact, I think there could even be some benefits! Repeated heating and cooling decreases the lifespan of various electronic components and can exacerbate issues with cold solder joints, if there are any. The thermal paste on the CPU could degrade slower when the temperature is high, but stable. Having the CPU fan running at the same speed all the time might also be better for it than cycling it from 10% to 100% as the load changes.

I understand that this is all just anecdotal evidence, but my experience seems to suggest that there is some truth to it.

Edit: To address the question of SSD life, you probably don't need to worry too much. Modern SSDs can survive a huge amount of writes, the seven days of testing are tiny compared to what the disk can handle. The folks at The Tech Report decided to do an experiment and abuse several SSDs until they die. Some even survived over a whopping petabyte of written data.

http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-only-two-remain-after-1-5pb