[SOLVED] i7 3770, idle temps are 49-52C, and goes up to 75-80C under load - should I be worried?

[Knonyx]

So, I haven't really measured my temperatures before but recently just last week, I felt like my PC was a little louder than usual, and performing a bit lower than usual as well. The title basically says the rest.

My specs:
i7 3770 (which is 3.4GHz base frequency but while gaming I see the CPU going up to 3.8GHz at times)
GTX 1660
16 GB RAM DDR3

My CPU usage also was around 15-30% while idle, and 70 to even 100% sometimes when gaming (though it usually is not at 100% for more than 10 seconds in a row). Just 20 minutes ago, I removed some programs I don't really use and brought it to around 10-20% while idle. I haven't tested this for gaming yet. Do you think it is required or highly recommended to get a new CPU cooler? Am I lowering the performance of the CPU in long term?

 

[mdd1963]

Temps probably normal, especially for a factory cooler...

Is/was this a fresh WIn10 install? All appropriate chipset drivers installed? (In balanced power mode, it might even idle down to as low as 800 MHz, but should turbo up to your ~3.8 GHz under load instantly)

Having 10-20% CPU usage when idle sounds high to me, but, many games will pretty much guarantee 100% usage while gaming anyway....

 

[Eximo]

Agreed. Fairly normal temperatures. Anything sub 90C is okay for an Intel chip. 80C is decent enough as a maximum. Even water cooled, my 7700k still hits 80C on occasion.

As for the noise, fans wear out over time. Could be simple dust build up, or just the fan bearings starting to go. Given the likely age of some of the hardware in there, might be wise to start looking at fan replacement/CPU cooler replacement.

Idle CPU usage: could just be your older Windows installation. Probably a lot of older programs running in the background. Might be time for a fresh install if you haven't done that in a while, or just clean anything you aren't using from startup and uninstall anything you definitely don't need. Might also check for stalled Windows updates. Anti-spyware/malware tools always a good idea.