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Active: 624 users

What Temperature should my computer be?

Forum Index > Tech Support
Post a Reply
Geordie
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United Kingdom653 Posts
June 01 2011 22:58 GMT
#1
Hello, with my new case I got ( NZXT Hades ) it has a display on the front showing the temperature of your computer. I am interested in knowing what is considering too hot and what is considering an alright temperature. When im running starcraft 2 the computer stays around 30 degrees. What temperature should I be getting with a CPU which has not been overclocked?
skyR
Profile Joined July 2009
Canada13817 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-01 23:04:00
June 01 2011 22:59 GMT
#2
CPU idle temperatures should ideally be under 40C and load temperatures should ideally be under 60C for stock clocks.

You must live in the arctic for load temperatures to be at 30c -.-
Zeke50100
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States2220 Posts
June 01 2011 23:09 GMT
#3
That's the case temperature, which could very a ton from the actual CPU temperature (unless otherwise stated).

Try running HWMonitor and see what it tells you the CPU temperatures are.
boyle
Profile Joined March 2011
United States134 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-01 23:48:49
June 01 2011 23:46 GMT
#4
i assume your talking 30 Fahrenheit not Celsius.

if you have amd you can use "AMD OverDrive™" AMD OD is a good program for over clocking / monitoring your computer.

under a heavy load your computer should be under 60 and idle between 30-45.

Your processor should have a MAX Temp around 60-62


mgj
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
191 Posts
June 01 2011 23:49 GMT
#5
Numbers really dont matter much.

Is your PC stable? (i.e. does not crash during stressPrime or similar tests)
If so, then the temperature is perfect.

Dont worry too much if the sensor says 30 or 60, who cares? What you want is a stable PC, not a cool or warm PC....right?
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-01 23:55:05
June 01 2011 23:51 GMT
#6
On June 02 2011 08:46 boyle wrote:
i assume your talking 30 Fahrenheit not Celsius.

if you have amd you can use "AMD OverDrive™" AMD OD is a good program for over clocking / monitoring your computer.

under a heavy load your computer should be under 60 and idle between 30-45.

Your processor should have a MAX Temp around 60-62




The max temp depends on the individual CPU quite a bit. Some Core temps can generally run a good bit higher than that safely, you should try to be more specific discussing temps.

@mjg: I'm not even going to quote that bilge to respond to you. That bad of advice doesn't deserve to be readable. Where do you get off saying temp doesn't matter at all? If it goes too high, you can kill your CPU and void your warranty. Don't give me the "Should shut itself down" line either, the only system that should take responsibility for protecting your components is you.

Temps can and do matter, and can push the too high mark without causing crashes, dramatically shortening the life expectancy of your CPU.
mgj
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
191 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:01:57
June 01 2011 23:57 GMT
#7
A CPU will become unstable way before it breaks.

I stand by what i said. Comparing temperatures are a waste of time. Even if I have a i5 2500 and you have a i5 2500, there is a very high likelyhood of them having different working temperatures. Thus, numbers are irrelevant.

Temps can and do matter, and can push the too high mark without causing crashes, dramatically shortening the life expectancy of your CPU.

Which is exactly why you do _NOT_ monitor the temperature. You monitor stability.
Kappa09
Profile Joined January 2011
United States149 Posts
June 01 2011 23:58 GMT
#8
Your computer temperatue does not matter at all and it's going to vary quite a lot depending if its a hot day or cold day. Also if there is constant airflow moving in the room or not. So there is no point to worry about that. Use speedfan to check your CPU and GPU temperatures to make sure they are at least at an acceptable range. You can find the acceptable range based on your specific CPU or GPU by doing a simple google search.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 02 2011 00:00 GMT
#9
Obviously the temperatures may vary, welcome to the joys of different individual chips. You can cause serious trouble running your Tcase borderline for excessive amounts of time, without hitting Tjmax and throttling/shutting down.

This may not be an easy scenario to cause, but to say it isn't relevant is flat out wrong, and dangerous advice.
mgj
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
191 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:05:02
June 02 2011 00:04 GMT
#10
I'd say its much more dangerous to have blind faith in working temperature specified in the white papers (OR ON A FORUM DESIGNED FOR GAMING!?).

You think the specific temperature is important, i value stability of the system more.
Enox
Profile Joined April 2010
Germany1667 Posts
June 02 2011 00:06 GMT
#11
On June 02 2011 08:49 mgj wrote:
Numbers really dont matter much.

Is your PC stable? (i.e. does not crash during stressPrime or similar tests)
If so, then the temperature is perfect.

Dont worry too much if the sensor says 30 or 60, who cares? What you want is a stable PC, not a cool or warm PC....right?

lol.. nice view... "i dont care about my temps as long as it runs stable". your GPU can run stable on 90+ degrees for a good while. is that healthy for the card? hell no. will it eventually break? pretty sure! same counts for all other PC components. you should always keep an eye on your temps to be able to do something before something breaks from overheating, especially in the summer

id say for CPUs around 40 degrees on idle and around 50 under load is fine
GPUs can handle quite a bit more. around 55 on idle and 70-80 under load should be no problem
If you think it's too hard there are solutions other than asking for a nerf, getting better is the first that comes to mind.
mgj
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
191 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:10:52
June 02 2011 00:10 GMT
#12
On June 02 2011 09:06 Enox wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 02 2011 08:49 mgj wrote:
Numbers really dont matter much.

Is your PC stable? (i.e. does not crash during stressPrime or similar tests)
If so, then the temperature is perfect.

Dont worry too much if the sensor says 30 or 60, who cares? What you want is a stable PC, not a cool or warm PC....right?

lol.. nice view... "i dont care about my temps as long as it runs stable". your GPU can run stable on 90+ degrees for a good while. is that healthy for the card? hell no. will it eventually break? pretty sure! same counts for all other PC components. you should always keep an eye on your temps to be able to do something before something breaks from overheating, especially in the summer

id say for CPUs around 40 degrees on idle and around 50 under load is fine
GPUs can handle quite a bit more. around 55 on idle and 70-80 under load should be no problem


Your CPU can run stable at 40 degrees for a good while, is that healthy? hell no! Why are you not running it at -20 degrees?

Components break. Lower temperature is almost always better. Yes.

But monitoring stability is reliable, something you cannot say about the numbers being thrown around inhere.

PS. By "monitoring stability" i obviously do not mean "Oh, it doesnt crash often/ever in SC2"
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:15:21
June 02 2011 00:12 GMT
#13
On June 02 2011 09:04 mgj wrote:
I'd say its much more dangerous to have blind faith in working temperature specified in the white papers (OR ON A FORUM DESIGNED FOR GAMING!?).

You think the specific temperature is important, i value stability of the system more.


Well, I'd rather take the white paper numbers, since those are tested values for life expectancy, than numbers you pull out of your ass while giving bad advice.

Stability of the system means absolutely nothing in the short term, as it can degrade rapidly if you're pushing your heat too high without causing an immediate crash or shutdown.

As it turns out, you can be "stable" and still wear out components fairly quickly.

I can get my system stable running P95 and hot enough to damage my CPU fairly easily.
Enox
Profile Joined April 2010
Germany1667 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:14:08
June 02 2011 00:13 GMT
#14
On June 02 2011 09:10 mgj wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 02 2011 09:06 Enox wrote:
On June 02 2011 08:49 mgj wrote:
Numbers really dont matter much.

Is your PC stable? (i.e. does not crash during stressPrime or similar tests)
If so, then the temperature is perfect.

Dont worry too much if the sensor says 30 or 60, who cares? What you want is a stable PC, not a cool or warm PC....right?

lol.. nice view... "i dont care about my temps as long as it runs stable". your GPU can run stable on 90+ degrees for a good while. is that healthy for the card? hell no. will it eventually break? pretty sure! same counts for all other PC components. you should always keep an eye on your temps to be able to do something before something breaks from overheating, especially in the summer

id say for CPUs around 40 degrees on idle and around 50 under load is fine
GPUs can handle quite a bit more. around 55 on idle and 70-80 under load should be no problem


Your CPU can run stable at 40 degrees for a good while, is that healthy? hell no! Why are you not running it at -20 degrees?

Components break. Lower temperature is almost always better. Yes.

But monitoring stability is reliable, something you cannot say about the numbers being thrown around inhere.

PS. By "monitoring stability" i obviously do not mean "Oh, it doesnt crash often/ever in SC2"

wow, your really stubborn... thats not even worth a discussion
If you think it's too hard there are solutions other than asking for a nerf, getting better is the first that comes to mind.
mgj
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
191 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 00:18:40
June 02 2011 00:17 GMT
#15
On June 02 2011 09:12 JingleHell wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 02 2011 09:04 mgj wrote:
I'd say its much more dangerous to have blind faith in working temperature specified in the white papers (OR ON A FORUM DESIGNED FOR GAMING!?).

You think the specific temperature is important, i value stability of the system more.


Well, I'd rather take the white paper numbers, since those are tested values for life expectancy, than numbers you pull out of your ass while giving bad advice.

Stability of the system means absolutely nothing in the short term, as it can degrade rapidly if you're pushing your heat too high without causing an immediate crash or shutdown.

As it turns out, you can be "stable" and still wear out components fairly quickly.


1. What numbers did i pull out my ass?
2. If you can do a 48h pass of stressprime (or similar) without errors, the system is most likely stable - And will be for a considerable amount of time.

Anyway,i think i've made my point. Have fun discussing whether 38 degrees are more or less ideal than 42.

wow, your really stubborn... thats not even worth a discussion

Im only stubbern because im trying to give competent help to OP. Something which i feel you guys are not able/willing to do.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 02 2011 00:23 GMT
#16
On June 02 2011 09:17 mgj wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 02 2011 09:12 JingleHell wrote:
On June 02 2011 09:04 mgj wrote:
I'd say its much more dangerous to have blind faith in working temperature specified in the white papers (OR ON A FORUM DESIGNED FOR GAMING!?).

You think the specific temperature is important, i value stability of the system more.


Well, I'd rather take the white paper numbers, since those are tested values for life expectancy, than numbers you pull out of your ass while giving bad advice.

Stability of the system means absolutely nothing in the short term, as it can degrade rapidly if you're pushing your heat too high without causing an immediate crash or shutdown.

As it turns out, you can be "stable" and still wear out components fairly quickly.


1. What numbers did i pull out my ass?
2. If you can do a 48h pass of stressprime (or similar) without errors, the system is most likely stable - And will be for a considerable amount of time.

Anyway,i think i've made my point. Have fun discussing whether 38 degrees are more or less ideal than 42.

Show nested quote +
wow, your really stubborn... thats not even worth a discussion

Im only stubbern because im trying to give competent help to OP. Something which i feel you guys are not able/willing to do.


"Competent help" usually doesn't involve telling them not to worry about temperature.

Feel free to provide sources showing that high load temps don't cause CPU degradation. Otherwise, you're somewhere in the range that covers trolls, idiots, and malicious advice.
boyle
Profile Joined March 2011
United States134 Posts
June 02 2011 01:04 GMT
#17
best thread ever...

my amd 965 is running stable at 60+ degrees... max temp is 61...

so i shouldn't invest in a 20 dollar heat sync to bring my temp down to 40-50?
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 02 2011 01:07 GMT
#18
On June 02 2011 10:04 boyle wrote:
best thread ever...

my amd 965 is running stable at 60+ degrees... max temp is 61...

so i shouldn't invest in a 20 dollar heat sync to bring my temp down to 40-50?


You probably should invest in an aftermarket cooler, yeah. Either anandtech.com or silentpcreview.com can give good benchmarks, depending on your priorities. Bear in mind that SPCR rates performance after noise, and price is the least concern.
Myrmidon
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States9452 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-02 02:04:00
June 02 2011 02:02 GMT
#19
Higher temperature and voltage are definitely bad for CPUs. This is a well known phenomenon. However, it's hard to measure degradation over years. The best people can do is look at degradation over shorter periods of time while jacking up the temperature and/or voltage.

Whether or not higher temperature leads to significant degradation over the useful life of a processor depends on what the temperature is, among a number of other factors, so saying that temperature doesn't matter at all is misleading at best. Long term, elevated temperatures can definitely make a stable system unstable in the future.

If you don't want to believe Intel/AMD white papers or Internet forumers...

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5753241
How these phenomena combine to diminish a chip's functioning depends on such factors as the circuit arrangement of the aging transistors as well as the voltages and temperatures they're exposed to.

There's more in general about modes of degradation and a technique for measuring it.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5075549
[image loading]
(sorry for the image quality)

That's testing nMOS transistors (not entire processors of course) with high-k dialectric. You're looking for the black squares and white squares. CHC = channel hot carrier, and PBTI = positive bias temperature instability. They're measuring long-term damage from PBTI, which is what we're interested in. Short-term effects of PBTI can be reversed and often go away after stress.

If anyone wants a read of either, that may be arranged through...PM.
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