I've been searching the web for a generic feel of what the Intel i5-650 3.2ghz temps should be running at. The opinions seemed to be varied by what or whom you happen to be reading at the time. Can anyone chime in with some advice/temps that you feel the processor's core temperatures should be when running general Windows apps like FireFox or something more specialized like our very own FS9?Also, has anyone found that water cooling is the way to go? Right now, I've got very good air flow through out my system case. So all the components won't be affected by ambient temperatures. However, I'm still using Intel's stock heat sink and fan on the CPU with Arctic Silver 5 for the thermal grease. Should I move to a water cooled solution or will a better heat sink and fan be be good enough?I mean, what would your recommendations be for a simple but effective water cooled solution, or, a really good heat sink and fan? My motherboard is a Gigabyte H55M-S2V and my video card is a Gigabyte GV-N450-1GI (nVidia GTS 450). I could use some good advice and would really appreciate the help :)Mark

Well Mark, water cooling wouldn´t make sense at so low clock speeds like 3,2 Ghz. A good air cooling will be suffice. I personally have my system oc´ed at 3 GHz and I even don´t have an after market cooler, just the heatsink which came with the CPU and it work´s quite ok. Under full load I get arround 69°C and right now on idle I have temparatures between 34°C and 42°C. So I think a good air cooling woud be suffice for that i5. Maybe I should also go for a better cooling?

Well Mark, water cooling wouldn´t make sense at so low clock speeds like 3,2 Ghz. A good air cooling will be suffice. I personally have my system oc´ed at 3 GHz and I even don´t have an after market cooler, just the heatsink which came with the CPU and it work´s quite ok. Under full load I get arround 69°C and right now on idle I have temparatures between 34°C and 42°C. So I think a good air cooling woud be suffice for that i5. Maybe I should also go for a better cooling?

I'm wondering as well. If you're not experiencing anything adverse then maybe we don't need too. This machine is going to be for software development exclusively anyway. It's just an intermediate solution as my old Core Duo died. As soon as the sandy bridge chipset stuff is resolved I'm going to build a i7-990X Extreme box. I think I'm going to liquid cool that box no matter what :)Mark

I'm wondering as well. If you're not experiencing anything adverse then maybe we don't need too. This machine is going to be for software development exclusively anyway. It's just an intermediate solution as my old Core Duo died. As soon as the sandy bridge chipset stuff is resolved I'm going to build a i7-990X Extreme box. I think I'm going to liquid cool that box no matter what :)Mark

The I7 990X is not a Sandy Bridge, just in case you're not aware of that. It's just a 980X with a slightly higher stock clock. And WC makes no sense unless you plan on OCing it

The I7 990X is not a Sandy Bridge, just in case you're not aware of that. It's just a 980X with a slightly higher stock clock. And WC makes no sense unless you plan on OCing it

Thanks for the info...it helps. I would like to get the highest clock speeds that the CPU can reasonably handle and which will match the maximum performance of what ever video card that I'm using. I mean, the goal here is to have the sim's sliders maxed out with AA and AF set so high that there is no shimmer or jagged edges anywhere. If it cost a couple of grand and some water cooling to make it happen then I'd say it's worth it.To think of the rates that I charge as a software engineer and the amount of time that I spend worrying about why my mid-range hardware doesn't cut it as much as I'd like is well, better spent forking over a few bucks. I should have just done that in the first place. That way, I can simply jump into the cockpit and get into the air. Now all I need to learn is what to expect with over clocking and temperatures and the like. You see, writing enterprise databases and systems don't require over clocking, just a whole bunch of cooling for all of those CPUs. So I've got to find out what to expect when I do start to over clock the box :)Mark