Mid-to-High-End Gaming Rig

[Dragonwell]

I did fix that issue, actually. I was being dumb and the solution was pretty obvious but yeah, the GPU is properly mounted now.

 

[Athadeus]

My OCed i7 930 with HT on got some cores to 88C on hot days last year even with Scythe Mugen 2 push/pull. I had a Radeon X1800XT hit 98C at a LAN party in a basement with no AC and little venting/airflow. Neither was particularly concerning, though I would be if those were long term temperatures.

It is hard to tell whether your cooling solution will be sufficient for overclocking until you try it. Like I said, you don't need to be concerned about temps even in the mid 80s during a week or two of testing, and then you can know what it takes to OC your chip. Maybe you can get to 4.5ghz with only 5C rise and that should be acceptable long term. You won't know till you try and there is no harm trying.

 

[Dragonwell]

I had read that the i5's critical temperature is about 72C, and that from Intel's own specifications. Is the real danger zone significantly higher than that, then? If you're running up to mid-to-high-80s on hot days then 72C just can't be the critical temperature for an i5 (that you run an i7 rather than i5 notwithstanding).

As I understand it, AS5 has a lengthy curing time, so I'll likely keep an eye on it and wait a week or two more before I try any OCing.

 

[mfenn]

That 72C is the max for Tcase, which is not what programs like CoreTemp measure. Tjmax is still ~100C.

 

[Dragonwell]

Huh. So in that case, if I'm pinging 90 to 95C, that's when I need to start worrying.

 

[mfenn]

Huh. So in that case, if I'm pinging 90 to 95C, that's when I need to start worrying.

Yeah, I would worry at anything above 90.