Is this a typical core temp?

System:
AMD T-Bird 1.2 / 266
MSI K7T Turbo-R
1280MB PC133 SDRAM (The awesome generic Russian kind)
Geoforce2 64MB
Two 30GB 7200 IBM drives in RAID 0 mode

For cooling, the case has a 92mm intake fan in the front spinning at 2800RPM. It has some heatsink/fan combo that I got with my processor and the guy who sold it to me said it was the approved(tm) heatsink/fan for all AMD T-Bird 1200Mhz processors (hah). I bought his pitch because at the time I hadn't upgraded anything since my Intel 266 - plus I was kept out of the loop while living for several years in technology challenged 3rd-world countries. Anyways, the CPU fan spins at 4800rpm. I also have a fan that sits in one of the PCI slots. It's just below my video card and pushes air off it and out the back at 42 cfm. The front intake fan, the cpu fan, the pci fan, and the power supply's fan is all I have cooling my system amidst a mesh of cables I have yet to tie up. My room temp is a constant 20C and inside the case is usually around 25C. My CPU idles at 47C and maxes at 51C. Can anyone tell me if something is wrong with that? Is that too high and what should a typical CPU core temp be for my AMD? I wonder if my diag program is screwy. I checked the specs for the CPU on AMD's website and they say it shouldn't go over 90C. 90C is huge! I bet their temp max is just theoretical and my chip would smoke at 70C. I'm going to mod a new case here shortly but it would be cool if someone could toss me some info. Thanks.

Your cpu temp is average but if you want to overclock you might want to buy a better heatsink.

That temp is a little high for a 1.2Ghz, if it was a 1.4Ghz you would be running nicely. HSFs are very cheap (excluding some, namely the Swiftech m462) for what they do, so dont skimp when buying one and get a cheapo hsf. A good hsf like a glaciator, SK-6 or the classic thermosonic would be perfect.

wow. 1280MB of ram. honestly, your temps are a bit warm, but not too bad. you could live with em.

That is on the verge of being too hot, anything over 45c idle is too much. You want to get a better heatsink.

but, if it's 47idle, and 50 under load then it's okay. Mine never gets above 35 under load, but 50 under load is managable and still easly leaves +-10 headroom for probes to report wrong. It's the under load temp that matters, not the idle temp.

If I were you I would get idle temp down because the processor will last longer,Also consider for a second the need to sit at close to max when all you are doing is surfing the web or away from the system.

There is a program that will set your system up so the processor will idle when not in use.It can be found at

{THAT is if you have a Via chipset}


www.athlonoc.com/tweakvia1.php