Duron at 90 degC ?

[SiRu]

No, not mine, but assuming I'm interpreting AMD's own data sheets correctly, 90C is stated therein to be the maximum permissable operating temperature for the die - and presumably the cpu is 'guaranteed' to work properly at these temps too. So, perhaps someone would care to explain why 'we' start panicking and stuffing our cases full of fans when temps look like they are approaching 'only' 60C...? For what it's worth my Duron 750@900 is averaging 50C - I don't think I should be particularly bothered about this...!

 

[TruculentTucan]

Well, for one thing, I wouldn't mind having a Duron running really hot. OK, so it gets fried... oh no! wait I have to dish out another (what is it now?) 50 bucks for a new one?

Most people worry about temps on the Athlon and Duron because as they get hotter they run the risk of getting too hot. Even though they are rated to go very high, many chips won't. Also most people want to protect their investment!

Also remember the temperature monitors are nortoriously inaccurate... therefore they could be reading temps much too low. As for your chip, don't worry about it at 50 C!

 

[Rand]

Many people start worrying because they want to protect their investment. Also, may people here are overclocking their processors, and the hotter a processor get's the less likely it is going to be capable of operating at a higher clockspeed.

Also, SocketA boards temperature readings tend to be extremely inaccurate because they cannot read the temperatures directly from the processor die itself and must therefore rely upon an external temperature diode. With some boards being offby as much as 15C.

 

[Boonesmi]

its like rand said, 90c(inside the core) is how hot it can safely get, but.... there is no way for the consumer to know when it gets that warm