simple OC question

I have an fx 6300 which is irrelevant. I'm looking to find out about temps before overclocking. My only question is if 60c is considered safe range for fx chips, does this include ambient temps? My home is kept at 19c. So if my CPU is reporting a temp of 20c, is it really running at 39c? Or does the 60c safe range refer only to the CPU tempx completely disregarding ambient?

The temp readings at your CPU should be read from a utility such as Coretemp or HWMonitor. Your ambient temps are contributing to the reading (if you turn off your PC for a day the temp should be the same as your ambient) but only to the extent that any cooling air you attempt to push across your system can't lower the temp below ambient. Your CPU will generate quite a bit of heat, moreso with OC'ing.

Robert17 said:

The temp readings at your CPU should be read from a utility such as Coretemp or HWMonitor. Your ambient temps are contributing to the reading (if you turn off your PC for a day the temp should be the same as your ambient) but only to the extent that any cooling air you attempt to push across your system can't lower the temp below ambient. Your CPU will generate quite a bit of heat, moreso with OC'ing.

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I've been using coretemp and it reads 22c at stock clocks when under 100% load in prime95. If I have a room temp of 20c, does this mean I have only 18c of ocing headroom before hitting that max safe temp? (60c). Or do I have 38c of headroom? Im using a custom liquid loop if that helps any.

The temperatures that HWMonitor is reading should be close to the real ones.
There would be absolutly no point in reading the temperature, leveled to 0°C ambient temperature. It's the actual core temp that is read. If it is 22°C at 20° ambient it might be 25° with 30°C ambient temperature or 20° with 16°C ambient temperature. And that's because the chip is slightly warmer / colder depending on your ambient temps. So definitly do not add up

Temperature is heat which is some kind of energy. This is energy is transfered to your chip resulting in a certain temperature. Let's say 20°C at 20°C ambient temperature (PC turned off). Now when you CPU is under load, it consumes energy to calculate things. It is not 100% efficient at that. Parts of that energy get wasted in form of heat. This heat heats your CPU, creating a certain dT (off to load). And this adds up on your ambient temperature. So what HWMonitor or real temp read already contains your ambient temp.

Wow awesome. That has just opened up a whole world to me for overclocking haha. Looking forward to pushing my fx 6300 to 4.6 and my gtx 670 to gtx 680 FTW speeds. Thanks a lot!

Infinite66 said:

I've been using coretemp and it reads 22c at stock clocks when under 100% load in prime95..

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You must have a pretty awsome cooling set up to maintain a max temp of 22 even at stock. Otherwise either you or coretemp is reading something wrong.
Try HWmonitor and verify that reading.

I'll say, 22c is super! Doesnt have his rig in his sig, so assumings it water cooled with only a CPU block.

And to answer your question, imho, I wouldnt want 60c on my amd chip. To be safe, and for longivity, keep your temps around 55-57~ under 100% load.

I have a fX6300,and I find it hard to believe your load temps are 22C even with watercooling.I have mine oc @ 4.4g at 1.35v.Temps are 18c to 46c.Assuming your not overclocking, its still a stretch on load.I would not push cpu past 60c for longevity sake.AMD doesn't give rats *** about idle temps,as most monitoring programs are inaccurate on fx idle temps,but very accurate on load temps.

The biggest problem with all fx cpu's is power consumption on load,that's why your 22c sounds inaccurate,unless you have some serious monster cooling.Intel cpu's manage power requirements much better than fx cpu's.This does not affect performance of fx cpu's,so I can deal with power requirements.Hardware monitor seems to work fine for most people,but with the amount of information you supplied on your specs,you should expect generic answers.