Need answers to heat on Duron/Athlon

[jaydee116]

I have been getting some mixed information about what the proper heat should be for the Durons. I been told it should never get above 120f and I have been told it runs fine at 160f+. I need you opinions.

A7V
Duron600@800

Thanks.

[vvx]

My experience with AMD tbirds/durons is that they run hot. With a chrome orb and 3 case fans in addition to the ps fan, I was sitting at 55C at full load and stable on a 900MHz tbird.. I had slightly cooler temperatures on a 600MHz duron. Now, I took out all the case fans, put a "silencer" case fan from pcpowerandcooling.com in the power supply (low flow, 28cfm.. compared to whatever was in there), put the ultra-quiet cpu heatsink from quietpc.com on the proc, (which BTW, actually outperforms the chrome orb and is nearly silent.) and my temps are now at 57/58C full load and stable.. I'm not overclocking, but that is perhaps a bit high, I'm going to put in a couple more of those silencer fans, one in the front and one for a fan-assisted duct for the CPU.. (Well, it really just sounds like a fun project.) So, this long reply all comes down to -- they run pretty hot. If it's stable for you, it's probably not too hot but if you want to do some serious overclock the lower the temp the better (to a point.)

[Rob Cork]

AMD claim they're rated to 80C, but my tbird always crashed when it got to 59C (138f). IMHO, 55C should be considered the max, and you shouldn't be comfortable until you get below 50C (122f). Obviously cooler is better, aim for 40-45C if you can (40C=104f)