How hot is too hot?

[Guest]

I've recently purchased an asus a7v133 from Micro Pro online. I bought a package which was supposed to consist of the older Asus a7v and an Athlon 800, along with a heavy duty heat sink and fan. They mistakenly (I think) sent me the newer A7V133 instead (with on-board audio AND raid support, which also wasn't supposed to be included). Obviously the company is now in my favor. The price was $256 on pricewatch when I ordered it, but they may have realized their mistake because the price was around $270 when I last checked it.

I suppose I'll get to my question instead of rambling about my good fortune. Just for curiosity's sake, I tried the jumper-free overclocking feature in my BIOS. To my surprise again, no modifications needed to be done to my processor. I've heard that there's supposed to be something done with a graphite pencil. I wasn't really interested in overclocking so I never bothered to read much about it. My question is, now that overclocking has been pretty much set up for me, how hot is too hot for a processor? The cpu temp is around 44C right now, and I've heard that 53C is still a very safe temperature for your processor. I don't want to be on the brink, but I want to know what is perfectly safe so I can squeeze a little bit more out of my new cpu. Any input on overclocking or heat related issues is appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

[doczenith1]

Check me on amd's website (they have whitepapers that document this stuff) but i think that 70C is about the upper limit.

 

[jclw]

My TBird doesn't run (reliably) above 60C

-JW

 

[Guest]

Yeah, 55'-60'C and the fun starts.

 

[Crashman]

Or stops. Same with my PIII. I think it has to do with the material and .18 micron process (hey, same transitor, same problem, reguardless of how their laid out).

Suicide is painless...........

 

[mpjesse]

Wow... the P3's supposedly run much cooler than a Athlon.. or is it a P4? Well, rumor has it that the Palomino is only going to require a heatsink for cooling- that would be awesome.

-MP Jesse

 

[Crashman]

Well, I have mine overclocked in a closed midtower case with one cooling fan, 5 internal drives, 2 SCSI cables, 2 IDE cables, 1 floppy cable, 6 cards, a stock PIII 933 cooling fan, and 1 case fan. Intel guys don't normally go overkill on cooling like AMD guys, but there are a few that do.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[mpjesse]

SCSI gets frigin hot- the high RPM drives anyways. BTW, how do you overclock a P3? I've never tried it.

-MP JEsse

 

[Crashman]

Yes, I could get mine 700 to 1021 if only I could keep it cool! I haven't got a noisy cooler for it yet-the OEM Intel cooler is so quite my 7200RPM drives drown it out (especially the older SCSI unit that sounds like a turbine). PIII's are easier to overclock than Athlons and overclocking provides better improvements over stock, because it is done with bus speed. It also requires no processor modification.

Suicide is painless...........