System Temperatures

I often see posts on OC and hardware sites about system temperatures: is it normal? Am I overheating? What is the maximum temperature for my CPU? etc, etc.

Over the years, I've found that the best and most logical approach is:

• Computer components, especially processors, hard drives, RAM and video cards will heat up.  It's a fact, get used to it.  They are designed that way.
• The heat needs to escape your system.
• If the system is designed well with proper fans, you should feel a lot of heat escaping the computer.  This is not a bad thing.  Hot air being blown out of your machine is a good thing.
• There are three times to watch for:
• Idle temperature - when doing mostly nothing, how hot do your components get?
• High utilization temperature - when doing things like playing high end 3d games, how hot do your components get?  What is the rate of increase from Idle?  Does it level off or keep going?
• Cool down temperature - when you stop doing high utilization stuff, how long before you go back to idle temperatures?

Airflow

The flow of air in and out of your system matters:

• Always have more air being blown out vs being sucked in
• Hot air rises, so exhaust fans should be on the top of your case
• Cold air goes down, so intake fans should be on the bottom of your case
• Imagine the air flowing in your case and look for dead spots where:
• Heat is generated
• No airflow takes the heat out.

Max Temperatures

My setup:

• i7 2600k @ 4.2 GHz
• 16GB RAM
• 2x Gigabyte GTX 570 SLI

I have a mini-tower case and everything is packed in there tight.  I'm using liquid cooling for the CPU and have an intake fan at the bottom of the case (sucking in from the floor) and an exhaust fan on the top of the case (pointing at the ceiling) and another exhaust on the side (right above the two video cards).  The max I've seen so far:

CPU MAX TEMPERATURE    : 84.0C
CORE0 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 83.0C

CORE1 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 85.0C

CORE2 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 82.0C

CORE3 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 81.0C

MAX CPU POWER          : 79.734W
AMBIENT MAX TEMP (MB)  : 63.0C

GPU1 MAX TEMPERATURE   : 74.0C

GPU2 MAX TEMPERATURE   : 67.0C

Idle temperatures are somewhere in the high 30s for the CPU, low 20s for the Ambient and low 30s for the video cards.  The rate I hit these temps are pretty quick (minutes) and it tends to level out.  After quitting a game, for example, the hot air blowing out of the case turns cool in a matter of seconds.  The temperature drops rather quickly.  I'll chart it one day, but I'm not so worried about it right now.

I hit these temps last night with Assassin's Creed Revelations at max settings for everything.