Oh, in those days, computers would fry themselves -- literally -- from overheating. CPU vendors raced to break the 1 GHz barrier, but thermal throttling wasn't as mature. If I pushed my computer too hard for too long (say, with a really tough ray trace) then it would just shut off uncleanly from being too hot.

The joke was you could fry an egg on your CPU because it got so hot:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/01/how_to_fry_an_egg/ http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~htsu/humor/fry_egg.html