I7-950 heating problems

[renviously]

Hi,

I've had an i7-950 (not OC'd) for a while now and never had any problems with it until recently. My temps are usually 50c - 55c (idling at 30c), but I've been playing Guild Wars 2 a lot lately and noticed my temps spike up to 65c - 70c whenever something intensive happens on the screen (lots of people and spell effects, etc.). I did some searching and found some discrepancies with what people were saying: while Intel's site (and people as well) were saying the max safe temp is 67c, others were saying as high as 80c. My case is not the best, but I think it's decent especially since this is the first time that I've come across any problems. I thought about downclocking or setting a static vcore, but I didn't want to mess with the BIOS as I'm not very familiar with OC'ing or anything related to it. I have an aftermarket cooler and I re-did the TIM before the game came out. My question is: are these temps safe? If not, are any of the options above (or anything else) viable?

Thank you.

 

[o1die]

Yes. The Intel rep on this website stated the max safe temp is 72c. You're ok.

 

[antonisrsx]

i was having the same problem as you. i have the same cpu not oc'd and i was hitting 80+c while playing bf3. i just set the cpu voltage to 1.1 and me highet was 68c. and now that the winter is coming my highet is 61c! the performance is still the same!

 

[jemm]

The LGA1366 line is well known for running real hot -- you do need a really good case to keep temps below 65~70C

 

[lilotimz]

What CPU cooler do you have? In a well cooled environment and a good cpu cooler; you'll get idle temps of mid 30s to low 40s and max temps around 60s. Stock coolers idle high 40s and get up to 70-80s but it's fine. You don't get into trouble until stuff start hitting 90+C..