How long can i run my CPU at high temps?

[iEfrideet]

So I'm running the stock Intel cooler from my i5 and I'm buying a new cooler next week because i know running at 80-90 degrees (when playing games, i probably play an hour or two a night) isn't good for the CPU. Am I doing severe damage to my computer by playing games at those temps? It should only be until Friday.

My CPU is an i7-8700k.

 

[The Original Ralph]

INTEL builds in a pretty decent thermal safety limit - when i built my first rig with a i7-4790, on an ASUS Z97M-Plus mobo, i relied on the Asus performance utility for temp monitoring. I render quite a bit of videos, which generally run the cpu at 100% loads or close to 100%

The Asus utility always showed a max temp of 67C, which seemed odd - it would go there and stay there, no deviation.

Finally after about 3 months i downloaded RealTempGT and it reported 98-100C. I downloaded intel's XTU (extreme tuning utility) and it reported the same. I did a little research and found a number of reports that the Asus utility was buggy.

But point is, for 3+ months, i'd rendered 2-3 videos a day, 1-3 hour jobs, 5 days a week, running my CPU at 98-100C, What it was doing was, when it hit 100C, it would throttle the CPU's load and it would fall back to 98C, then immediately climb back to 100C. That was a pretty serious attempt to fry my CPU

since then, i've corrected the cooling issue, but whenever i run the benchmark in XTU and let it upload the results to HWBOT (Intel's web) it will allow me to compare the results to other users running the same CPU and chipset - i've always scored in the top 5% , score wise, so i'm pretty comfortable the thermal limit kept me from damaging my CPU - i built that rig almost 4 years ago.

I don't recommend testing your CPU like i inadvertently did, but it will tolerate some excess heat situations

hope that helps