What's a safe level of heat for an AMD Athlon 1900+?

[ZeroAce]

I'm wondering how high I can take this thing without watercooling.

[ZeroAce]

I'm running at 50C right now... It was 35C before I started overclocking.

I went from 1.6hz to 1.8ghz so far... I think it will get unstable if I rank it up any more.

I already have 7 fans in my system.
I think I may need to use high quality conducing gel and attach a better heatsink to the CPU, as well as putting in a higher speed fan.

[extreme_gamer]

the athlon XP processors can handle up to 90 C, but most people, including me, recommend staying at 55 C (full load) or lower....

*edit* of course, i dont think anybody at this site has gone above 60C, i'm just saying athlon processors ( excluding slot A ) can handle 90C MAX
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/maxtemp.htm

[OuTpaTienT]

It depends a lot on your hardware, how accurate it reports the temp, and how sensitive you motherboard is to temps. Saying those processors can handle 90C is ridiculous. Nobody has EVER seen those temps except maybe in AMD's laboratory. I know my XP crashes at about 55C.

[ZeroAce]

So, is cooling the only real limitation to how high this thing can go?

[jmichna]

The 90°C (85°C on some models) is the maximum temperature that AMD states will not result in physical damage... they do not claim the CPU actually runs at that temperature.

I've run all kinds of post-Slot-A CPUs (TBirds, Palominos, TBreds-A and -B, and now Bartons)... I know that mobo temp sensors are not very accurate, but I've run these CPUs on Abits, Asus, Shuttle and EPoX boards, so there's a pretty fair cross section of temp measurement.

My experience has been Athlons begin to show errors/lockups/BSODs when the CPU temp gets above about 57°C. This is nowhere near the temp that will result in physical damage. It would be really tough to run a chip at a temp so high you're going to hurt it.

In the summer, I return all our PCs to default speeds (we try to avoid running the A/C) and I run all summer with the CPUs between 50 and 55°C. In the cooler months, all our PCs go back to overclocked conditions.