BleepingComputer.com: Thermal Shutdown

I HAVE A DELL 610 PRECISION WORKSTATION WITH DUAL XEON 550 PROCESSORS. THE UNIT RECENTLY SHUT DOWN DUE TO PROCESSOR FAN FALIURE. TYPICALLY THIS SYSTEM REMAINED ON DUE TO DOMAIN CONTROLLER STATUS. PRIOR TO REPLACING THE FAN, IT WOULD SHUT DOWN SOMEWHERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF 6 - 7 MINUTES OF OPERATION. THE FAN WAS REPLACED, HOWEVER NOW IT SHUTS DOWN EVEN FASTER THAN PREVIOUSLY, MORE LIKE 2 - 3 MINUTES. MY THOUGHTS ARE THE CPU'S HAVE SUSTAINED DAMAGE. ALSO CONTRIBUTING TO THAT CONCLUSION IS THE SOMEWHAT FLICKERING ACTIVITY ON THE MONITOR DURING BOOT. ANY THOUHGTS ??

Do you have any hardware monitoring software on the machine? Check the component temperatures and see if they are reaching critical limits. You can use Everest Free edition.

Are the fans thermally pasted to the processor in any way? The lack of a paste or thermally conductive material between the processor and the fan's heatsink could seriously inhibit the cooling properties of the fan. If you scraped some 'gunk' off of the proc when you put in the new fan, you should probably get some new thermal paste like arctic silver 5 or AS ceramique

Does it remain on longer if you have a house fan blowing into the case? If so, then it's likely a heat issue. If not, then I'd suggest looking elsewhere for the problem (such as failing hardware or software/driver/OS corruption).