Are my temperatures too high?

[StandardFiend]

I've got a Core i3-530 at the stock speed of 2.93GHz under the stock HSF. Before installation I removed the thermal pad that came on the heatsink and applied Arctic Ceramique as directed per Arctic's instructions.

(The instructions said to apply one vertical line down the middle of the CPU, by the way.)

When idling, the temperature sometimes dips down to about 27 degrees, but usually hovers around 30. When I'm moving the mouse around or using Explorer or the Internet, it usually sticks around 36 degrees, but right now its fluxuating between 37 and 40, usually staying closer to 40.

While playing TESIV: Oblivion the temperature hovers around 42 degrees. When playing Mass Effect it jumps to around 48 degrees, sometimes dipping as low as 44 and once in a while going up to 52.

The fan is set to Auto and right now, while the temp is 38, it's spinning at over 1900 RPM.

These numbers do not seem right to me. What's the situation? Is my machine running too hot? I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but it's summer and I'm in California, and it is quite hot in my room.

Any suggestions on how to chill this thing out? Seems way too hot to me.

 

[enzo matrix]

Those are awesome temperatures, especially considering you are in california! You have no worries! As a general rule, I like to keep my max temp below 60*C

 

[loneninja]

Seems good to me, especially on the horrible stock cooler Intel provides. It varies between processor but 60-70C is usually considered the max safe operating temp, so your fine.

 

[StandardFiend]

Thanks folks. The old saying, ignorance is bliss, really is true here. In my old system that didn't have a temp LED on the MoBo, I never gave a damn about temps, but now that I can see temps in real time, I worry about it constantly.

Another question, would it be okay to manually set my fan to run at a constant 2.3k RPM or something like that? I honestly don't mind the noise, since I'm used to it by now. I would just want to be certain I won't burn out the equipment by spinning too fast.

 

[StandardFiend]

I ran CPUID hardware monitor and game back with temps identical to the LED readings, so it's accurate.

 

[StandardFiend]

The fact that I was playing a game was irrelevant; I was trying to find out if my temperatures were too high overall. I got my answer to that question: they are not too high.

Also, considering that I won't ever be doing anything on this machine that pushes it to 100% load, finding out how hot it runs at 100% is irrelevant. Finding out if, while playing a game, it runs too hot, is relevant, and again I got an satisfactory answer in that regard.

Thanks, but telling me how wrong I'm doing this is not helping.

 

[StandardFiend]

Best answer selected by StandardFiend.