How hot is too hot?

[shally17 1]

Hello All, I have overclocked my i7 920 to 4.1 and am running CPU z hardware monitoring. My 4 cores usually hover around 53C but occasionally get up to 63-65C. Is this OK? I have one of the better CPU air coolers. Regards,Steve.

[NGX 1]

Anything above 75C would be too hot. Those temps are fine.

[KLM149 1]

Click>> Overspeed ProtectionAt 4 GHz Intel’s over-speed protection will kick in. The primary purpose of this feature is to protect the processor from overheating at highly over-clocked settings by effectively throttling the processor speed. The feature could not be switched off with the BIOS version I use (so check), and it kicked in when I set the system to run at 4.0 GHz. Its activation becomes obvious as I observed performance that was actually not much superior to that at the 3.8 GHz setting. I returned to 3.6 to overcome to much heat, since the cooling fan that comes with Intel is not that adequate. If you can measure the power the pc take you might observe a reduction of power after some minutes. (~400W >> 360W)

[UlfB 7]

Hello All, I have overclocked my i7 920 to 4.1 and am running CPU z hardware monitoring. My 4 cores usually hover around 53C but occasionally get up to 63-65C. Is this OK? I have one of the better CPU air coolers. Regards,Steve.

Stress test your OC with OCCT for an hour. You'll be on the safe side if your temps stay below 80C and your VCore is below 1.45V. @DiannaAgron: A Core i7 920 processor won't have any problem with temps up to 90C. The 80C rule for OCCT stress test will give you a safety margin for hot summer days with high ambient temps.

[Kosta 122]

Hello All, I have overclocked my i7 920 to 4.1 and am running CPU z hardware monitoring. My 4 cores usually hover around 53C but occasionally get up to 63-65C. Is this OK? I have one of the better CPU air coolers. Regards,Steve.

Those CPUs can easily do 90c. Past 95c I think they start throttling. I know a friend of mine read once 102c, and it was still working, he was playing WoW. Apparently CPU cooler died, he didn't notice it...

[UlfB 7]

Temps over 90C will shorten the lifespan of the CPU. But if it lasts a couple of years, you've probably built a new pc