I had a total shutdown of an i7, but have worked though that issue. It was heat related and I simply run that machine on 4 cores, with HT off. The other i7s had no issue at all running 8 threads and my t5500s run 23 threads without a hicup. Work is consistent, except on the only app I need a badge.
Edit: just got my 9th badge on SRBase.