Conspiracy Theory:

Windows 10 - suspiciously free upgrade and "pirate friendly."

Microsoft - really rolling with the hardware scene lately.

Windows 10 Updates - suspiciously destroyed the hardware in 4 laptops and a desktop I've worked on putting the owners in the market for new Microsoft hardware.

Coincidence?

Yes, coincidence.

Hardware? Probably coincidence.
The rest isn't.

They make far more money on data mining (and outright spying) than they ever could on end-user software licences. Ergo, Windows 10 is free / easy to acquire.

The OS is no longer the product.
You are.

Yeah, I would have to say coincidence.

But you still get an upvote!

Okay, how does MS (or any other) software destroy hardware (supposing it wasn't faulty in the first place)?

@kamen you can do it ez on linux :)

@kamen force over clock and remove temperature caping for the CPU. Should be easy for Microsoft if they wanted to.

@Rr42 Maybe possible in theory, but I personally haven't seen this in practice. Moreover, if you've set a hard CPU shutdown temp in the BIOS/UEFI, I doubt the OS can override it.

@kamen but you be very paranoid to set a CPU temperature caping in the BIOS. I mean most people don't even know what a BIOS is.

Killing hardware is easy:
Overwrite the firmware. Done.

Cpu is harder: remove temp limits and turn the fan off. But there's a setting in the bios preventing that? Tell IME (Intel Management Engine) to override it, since it has unfettered access to everything. Easy for Microsoft since they're partners, and Windows/IME communicate anyway. Difficult for black hats because there's no documentation and using IME obv requires exploits if you don't have access to the backdoors, but it's still been done before. (And remotely, too.)

Still, I don't see any real benefit for Microsoft to do this. Definitely coincidence. (and/or new, flawed drivers causing issues/damage)