i7 920 (actuall) heat limit?

[idata]

From what I've gathered intel recommend not to go past the 69c limit, while my i7 (clocked) is at 80-85c at FULL load (that is with prime95) and like 55-65 when running somewhat heavy games. I'm wondering where's the "actuall" limit for it to be safe so to speak, and that is when not at full load as there's no application that I know of (or plan to run) that's heavier on the CPU than prime95. Also I dont plan to have this cpu working for me for 5years+ or so as the official "69 limit" take into account but more like a lifespan of, say maybe 2-3 years with daily use of a few hours.

sorry of the wall of text.

[plee21]

Hi

Zeux wrote:

From what I've gathered intel recommend not to go past the 69c limit, while my i7 (clocked) is at 80-85c at FULL load (that is with prime95) and like 55-65 when running somewhat heavy games. I'm wondering where's the "actuall" limit for it to be safe so to speak, and that is when not at full load as there's no application that I know of (or plan to run) that's heavier on the CPU than prime95. Also I dont plan to have this cpu working for me for 5years+ or so as the official "69 limit" take into account but more like a lifespan of, say maybe 2-3 years with daily use of a few hours.

sorry of the wall of text.

Running a torture test will and can push the CPU to a very high temperature, and see it exceed the maximum ratings. The chip and cooling solution from Intel is based to cope with typical use, which would rarely see the processor being pushed to 100% continuously as it is with a burn in test. Intel CPUs have built in throttling to slow the CPU down should it be tortured in such a way, rather than specifiying big heavy heatsinks and fast noisy fans to cover the odd case where the CPU finds itself running flat out for extended times, even then the CPU may not be able to transfer heat away fast enough from the chip to the heatsink.

So 60-65 degrees while game playing sounds absolutely fine, and temperatures reaching 80 degrees plus during a torture test is all as designed. You can't burn out the chip as it will regulate itself when temperatures reach 90 degrees or so. I know it all sounds hot to use but silicon devices can run at 150 - 200 degrees quite happly and often only have to run cooler to stop their packages melting

Best Regards

Phil

[idata]

That's what I've come to understand as well, I've also found that intel are very efficient when it comes to volt to clock ratio where I actually pulled down my default vcore a notch yet having it clocked from 2.67 to 3.7ghz~, Having always been of the AMD crowd I've had to run close to 1.5v to run a stable 3.5ghz. So you're saying I could basically go up towards 3.8-3.9ghz as long as I dont go past like 75c~ as a constant temp when gaming (or what ever I may be doing)? which means prime95 thermal values wont matter at all considering I'll most likely never load the CPU that heavy?

I guess what I could do is run "real temp" program in the background for a few weeks and monitor my normal load temps.