Not everything is good when it runs hot. Coming to computers – managing heat and temperature is an endless obsession of a lot of people. The extreme lengths that some people go to keep temperatures down is an exercise in creativity and high performance cooling. It generated entire companies who specialize in heatsinks, AIOs ( all in one liquid coolers) and even “water blocks” for your CPU / GPU. The countless number of fan models available from various brands are a testament to the fact that – PC users are greatly bothered about their temps – some even keep a second screen to continuously monitor these as well.
The natural question that arises – What are “Safe” temperatures? Safe in one geography may not be the same in another. Without a simple answer – let us try to look at this objectively. Let’s start with what happens when your components continuously run at higher temperatures.
- Reduced efficiency – Components which run hotter- automatically downclock to “preserve” themselves. For example – if your shiny new i9 14900K is not cooled sufficiently – it “throttles” down to a lower frequency – also referred to as thermal throttling. This directly affects your performance since your badass processor cannot work at its maximum intended speed / frequency, which brings us to our next point.
- Reduced lifespan – Sustained operation at higher temperatures also affects component lifespan – it could melt soldering or even have a component die on you. We’re pretty sure you must’ve seen videos of graphic cards spontaneously combusting – although not directly attributable to high temperature loads – these certainly have an effect. The bottom line always has been this – Higher temperatures are not “cool” for your system (p.s. This is the last punny line you read in this blog – promise)
Various factors influence component running temperatures;
Ambient temperatures – probably one of the most obvious factors which many regular users tend to ignore. The ambient temperature of the room in which your hardware is running is the single most important factor which decides what temps your hardware will run at – there is a reason why most datacenters and server rooms have insane amounts of cooling – About 10%-20% of total spend in a data center is geared towards ensuring sufficient power and cooling!
Fans, Coolers, Heatsinks, Thermal paste, Thermal pads – The next thing that every PC builder obsesses about – not without reason. Components which actively and passively cool your components and subcomponents – these directly affect running temperatures since.
A well thought air flow design with high quality cooling components can work wonders with the temperature readings you see in your PC.
Finally – attempting to answer the question – What are safe temperatures ?
Lets see what the manufacturers have to say.
On the Intel product page for 14900K – intel defines Junction Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.
What this means is that the processor can go upto 100 and still work without problems
Similarly Nvidia, AMD and other manufacturers mention the tolerances of running temperatures around 90 – 100 degrees centigrade.
Another example is SSD and memory manufacturers which typically mention an operating range of temperatures 0 – 75 degrees. A key thing to note is – many manufacturers always leave a safety buffer from the temperature ranges that they officially publish.
So – Lower temps are amazing right ? Well, not quite – although an edge case and something which would never happen for a regular user – if your components drop below ambient temperature ranges – you run the risk of condensation on your components which is a death knell for your entire system at times.
As a final note – even similarly specced hardware can run at different temperatures at different locations – the delta is determined by the ambient temperature of your hardware. To summarize – best practices are to follow manufacturer related guidelines.
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- themvp.in team
