How hot is too hot?

[Essence_of_War]

Rig is in my sig.

I have a 1-BR apt, and my computer gets to live in the living room. We try not to air condition the living room in summer unless we have to because it costs noticeably more money, so I usually keep some temperature monitoring open on my GPU when I'm gaming (MSI afterburner)

In games like Witcher 2, Batman, Skyrim, SC2, etc with all settings dialed up, I consistently see:
GPU fans getting to ~70%,
GPU usage of close to 100%,
GPU temps getting to like 70ish C.
Ambient temps have gotten up to 30-32C so far while doing this.

Basically, is this too hot? If it's not, what should I look out for to indicate that it is? My guess is that it's probably still OK because the gpu fans haven't maxed out trying to cool the gpu, but I wasn't sure.

 

[imaheadcase]

That is fine, long as you got plenty of cooling in case everything should be right as rain.

 

[Eureka]

Keep everything under 90°C and you're in the good range. 70°C is good to keep at. In the summer do expect fan speed to ramp up higher as the default profiles on AMD cards tend to compensate fast for heat (as opposed to Nvidia profiles which let the cards run up to 90°C).

 

[Durvelle27]

70C is pretty good. My cards climbs up to 82C

 

[Black Octagon]

70C for near-100% GPU usage is actually quite good!

 

[tweakboy]

Guys these video cards are built to go above 100c . Which is why some people play in 90's c temp but no crash. Which is totally not acceptable. ...

70's c and 80's c is great for a GPU.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Great, thanks folks!

 

[SirPauly]

I start to feel uncomfortable in the mid 80's!

 

[FaaR]

70 is nothing. My top GPU in the SLI stack (uATX chassis, so no free slots inbetween) sits at an uncomfortable 98C right now while folding.

I'm wondering, when exactly are GTX 770 chips supposed to start to thermally throttle? I have temperature target set at 79C - which is the default for my ASUS DirectCU-II OC - but the hardware doesn't seem to actually care about that. Power target is nowhere near 100%, it hovers around 50-60 or so.

My next system is definitely going to have a full ATX mobo... Dual vidcards don't really work in uATX unless the cooler has a blower fan that evacuates the air outside, ugh.

 

[SiliconWars]

I'd go nuts with my fans on 70%. That's one reason why I prefer lower-midrange cards - I'll happily set the fan to a constant <35% and it's barely audible while keeping load temps in the 70's.

 

[blastingcap]

The older processes were bigger and sturdier. For 28nm GPUs like in OP I would be nervous going over 80C for extended periods of time. Try to keep it at 75C or lower, preferably 70C or lower.