What's a decent operating temperature for a CPU? I'm sitting on an Intel E6750 @ 2.66 GhZ, cooled by this; I'm using Artic Silver thermal paste.

When idle the CPU temp remains around 38C (the second core is usually ~2C lower at all times), and at a heavy load (Crysis on med, WoW on full), it reaches around 52C-57C; this seems to be a little hot, am I just paranoid or is everything running just fine? (BTW my case temp reads about 30C on idle and 43C on a heavy load, mt HDD never gets above 27C). All these temps were recorded with SpeedFan.

57c at full load is fine

Are you using real temp?

Mine's at 37c- not much load..watching a video & running Firefox/Tbird (E2180 @ 3Ghz). Not sure what it hits on full load, but you should be ok.

You're doing better than whatever sensor in my computer swears it's running at 122 Celsius all the time.

Those are normal temps.

Be careful if you are trying to compare temps with others online. In one crowd, you have the folks that are obsessed with getting their CPU obnoxiously cool. In another crowd, you have folks that are trying to keep temps "satisfactory" while tweaking and pushing their CPUs to the limit.

Hmm, that's good to hear. SpeedFan displays an "oh **** fire" symbol once something breaks 50C, so I got concerned..

Probably because SpeedFan was written by one of the aforementioned idiots that buys watercooling equipment for hard drives. :downs:

Which is funny, because hard drives actually run better when they are hot. They run better and last longer up until about 55 C, after which their life expectancy begins to get lower.

My HDs are at 41c and 42c..what's the optimal range?

My laptop's "default" temperate is 53 degress (F), and that's when it isn't going anything intensive. I'm not sure how accurate laptop internal sensors are, but it is understandable if they get fairly warm to hot.

53f is less than the ambient temperature in Alaska right now.

Anything below 55 C is good. In reality, it shouldn't matter as long as you don't go far over 55 C. The study I read was just debunking the idea that you need to keep hard drives excessively cool.

My core runs about 55 C most of the time.

I have an E8400 and it idles at 39C and is 53C at full load. Your temps are fine.

RealTemp is really only needed with the 45nm chips.

Pretty sure he means 53 degrees C.

It'll run a lot better if it's set on fire.

I meant to say Celsius. opps.

I wish my computer would run at 53F. Then it'd make it cooler in here instead of hotter.

I just booted up and...:

System: 37C
CPU: 48C
NB: 50C

What's NB?

North Bridge, I would suspect.

I remember my temps on my laptop being in the mid to low 50 range, i think the highest I ever remember it getting was 66 under load (exhaust holes were covered by paper that was sitting on my desk). I'm not sure about my desktop, but i know when I turn it off, my room is a lot cooler than when I have it on.

Your temps are fine, I wouldn't worry until they start reaching around 60 for long periods of time.

[EDIT] just booted up speedfan, all temps are below 50.
HD0: 47
Temp1: 49
DIMM: 45
CPU: 45
GPU: 43
And this laptop has been up for 3 days and 18 hours[/EDIT]

just warning: dont touch cpu if you open computer up after you have computer running for while

I idle at 33-34, load (games) brings it up to 50-51. I don't have temp sensors for my HD or mem sticks (at elast not into MBM)

i'm at 45C right now, my macbook pro never gets more than 10 degrees away from that.