Why do we care about temps so much?

McGraw

McGraw

McGraw

Soldato
Joined
16 Jan 2006
Posts
3,051
Obviously an overclock is pointless if it causes throttling but other than that, why do we really care?

I ask because I see people wondering about gaming temps in the 60's and stress temps in the 70's and then realise the e8400 in my laptop runs at 95c+ on a tjmax of 105 and is almost 6 years old and still going strong.

We know intel don't/can't be too specific about normal temps and lifespans but everything seems conjecture as I don't read any stories of pure heat, not volts killing a cpu.

Am I mad to think a throttling haswell for instance would probably survive being left on 24/7 through the 3 year warranty period?
 
Because we're the OCD nothing is ever good enough PC master race.

I dunno, I'm one of those that has to remain under a certain temp even though it means nothing of importance at the end of day...
 
just trying to keep the fan speeds a bit lower so the whole rig doesn't make too much noise while gaming.
Don't have a dedicated room for the computers so we have to keep the rigs quiet for the people watching tv 5m behind us.

if sound was no issue i'd run my rig at 4.8ghz 24/7 but the fans go mental under load at those overclocks. losing 300mhz isn't the end of the world.
 
Good points.

I do have silicon sympathy but not enough to worry too much

When I asked the question I was kind of assuming volts at max safe 24/7 and not throttling plus stock clockers.

I've never checked load temps on my dad or stepsons pcs that I built.
 
Ok so you get your clock speed where you want it at volts your happy with but temps peak at 99c...are you bothered?

This is what I'm talking about, lowering clocks to get temps down or buying better coolers to get stock temps down.
 
Because high temp coupled with high volts are a recipe for fast CPU degradation.


High temps are not sooo bad if you are not ramping the volts up beyond stock (like your laptop cpu).
 
I own some i7 based servers running bespoke Neural Networks. Some of my machines are running 100% CPU load 24 hour 5 days a week. They can do this month in month out, probably some of the most used Intel CPU's on this forum in terms of processing done.

The machines are all undervolted. I aim to run core temps no more then 10 degrees under TCase. If I aim for this the CPU's hopefully should never error, or at least never fail in there useful life time.
 
Last edited:
I have two gaming PC's in a small room, the cooler they run the more comfortable the room is in the summer. I appreciate good cooling just means the heat is dissipated faster, but I value efficient components so that the heat output is as low as is reasonably possible.
 
I dint worry that much about cpu temps, as a haswell user I expect them to be higher than other chips. 74c max in games. Gpu's though I worry a bit about my too card as it gets upto 80c quite easily, which in turn heats the whole case up. But I'm working on a plan to fix that.
 
I have always seen it as:

The cooler the temperature, the faster the PC = colder = quicker :D

as somewhere above said - more volts when colder, thus a more stable overclock, plus it means you dont have to worry about the temps, i hate having to look at my temps all the time :(
 
Lower temps can also mean prolonged life of components, that said, my 4790K will easily hit 80-85C under full load with my H100i
 
bloodkil said:
Lower temps can also mean prolonged life of components, that said, my 4790K will easily hit 80-85C under full load with my H100i
Click to expand...

Mine hits that at stock at around 1.2v with the stock cooler.

At 4.5ghz 1.236vcore max I get up to 75c in premiere and fsx with my small case and quiet fan.

I obviously care about temps somewhat as I'd be be at 4.6/1.26v but I don't see the point.
 
Well tbh guys, i put 1.300v through mine for daily use. Funny thing is, if i run it at stock speed, it doesnt really hold back my sli 780's in gaming. I guess, i just like clocking things. Yes it can be frustrating with testing etc. But when you get a nice cpu oc running stable for your uses, it is a nice feeling. Im not the best overclocker by any means, but i do enjoy tweaking things.
 
The reason temperatures are important to enthusiasts is because we run processors beyond their officially rated specification and voltage and the only real way for us to thoroughly test stability is to hammer the processor with calculations with something like Prime95, we don't have the convenience of multi million dollar equipment that inspect a silicon at the electrical/physical level like Intel do. So temperature is obviously important because if you can't keep it cool enough then you can't properly test its stability, whereas at stock you know that a processor is going to be stable (short of being faulty) as Intel have tested it and binned it accordingly.

The only cases where enthusiasts can't properly stability test is on some recent AMD CPU's and GPU's where they are designed to throttle beyond a certain load point, usually to keep temperature in check and protect inadequate VRM's (also a factor with laptops).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom