i7-860 hit 89 degrees - Should I worry?

[CraigRT]

Many Intel quads easily reach 70C+ w/ the stock or alternative barely adequate cooling that HP/Acer/Dell/Gateway/etc use.

Even the factory boxed cooler that the i7's come with is barely adequate according to reports.

I figure for the $ I am spending on a system with an i7 in it, why not spend $20-30 more on a decent (not psycho noisy) cooler.

I put a Hyper 212+ on my i7 and even with the sides on my case, it barely even gets warm. It's also plenty quiet.

 

[Markfw]

Probably the fact that I've never once seen it. The following processors do not work past 70C and will fail prime95 immediately:
E6600
Athlon X4 620
Phenom X4 9600
E2140
Pentium4c 2.4GHz

Some laptops fail prime95 at stock settings. I'm typing this on a 1.6GHz Celeron laptop (Acer) that has failed the small FFT test a few times, reaching about 75C at its peak. For that reason, I don't use this laptop for anything more important than browsing the internet.

I have run Athlon X4 620, E2140 and seen E6600 all past 70c and worked fine. It must have been your overclock that was bad, not at stock, they work fine at 70c.

 

[pm]

At Intel in the labs, we regularly test CPU's - the same ones that are being shipped - at 90C. I think the burn-in ovens operate around there as well. 90C is fine. The issue is that some of the organic molecules of the OLGA package start to "cook" around 110C and then you start to run into permanent trouble.

As far as CPU's always failing at high temperature, this may be true at the stock frequency. If you lower the frequency, it should function correctly. CMOS silicon is usually good to well above 140C. It's the more fragile materials that make up the package like the OLGA package (older and more expensive ceramic packages can go a lot higher) and the resin that makes up the BGA underfill material that usually causes problems.

* Not a spokesperson for Intel Corp. *