Does temperature kill hardware? I wasn't very careful with my first laptop (a 2007 model with a dual-core CPU and a discrete GPU), and often used to run it on my lap with the fans blocked. It regularly got up to a sustained temperature of 96c. And it ran fine for 5 years (used for several hours most days) before the screen gave out. It actually still runs fine now with an external display, although it rarely gets used.