What is a maximum safe processor temperature?

[portsample]

I've recently upgraded my processor from a 2.0ghz T7300 to a 2.4ghz T7700. I have not noticed a significant temperature increase under normal minimal load word processing, web surfing, etc with the normal temp being around 55c or 131F....however, recently when ripping a DVD the temperature went way up to 195F. When doing this with the old processor, I do recall a temperature increase, just not as much. I did clean the fan and replace the thermal grease during the swap out.

What is a max processor temp for these Thinkpads?

[ajkula66]

Most laptop CPUs - Core 2 Duo included - will shut down at 100 degrees C. T7700 is known to be hot-running.

My suggestion would be to install Middleton's BIOS and go to T9300/9500 which will run cooler than T7700/7800 at similar loads.

[TuuS]

Sounds to me you weren't actually ripping a disc, rather re-encoding the video. Many combine these terms but they are very different operations. Ripping a disc is simple, re-encoding or transcoding video requires a huge amount of resources, cpu and memory, so you would expect to see high temps. Anything approaching 90c degrees will start throttling and slow you down, but an efficient cooling system will help. One thing that may help is using a T61p heatsink, it has two heatpipes on the CPU instead of one (3 total). It will require some extra attention when assembling to assure you have a good fit on your integrated intel gpu, but I've found they can cool much better when properly used.

If you have a 15.4" widescreen or 14.1" standard model, I have some of these heatsinks and you're welcome to message me. For the 14.1 widescreen they did make heatsinks of this style (3 heatpipes), but I think I sold the last one I had.

I'd also consider the type of thermal paste used. Arctic silver #5, when properly applied will generally run a few degrees cooler then even a fresh application of the factory ceramic based paste. There really is a noteable difference between them. AS5 uses 99.9% pure silver (microscopic) to fill the gaps which seems to transfer heat much better then ceramic particles used in the cheaper formulas. This is no surprise, compare this to a ceramic coffee cup, you can have hot coffee in the cup but the cup itself doesn't feel as hot as a metal cup would be, metals tend to transfer heat better, heavy metals like silver are very good at it.

I'd also recommend using tpfancontrol and running your fan on manual mode, highest speed before starting any long cpu intensive task. This will result in a lower starting temp when the task begins, but if your temp gets close to dangerous levels it will turn off manual mode (for safety), but I still think it's helpful Generally a system will work upto 60-65c degrees before the fan kicks in, then idle at this range, but in manual mode you can idle much lower. There really is no overall advantage to idling at a lower temp, but it is helpful in this case to get a heatstart on the cooling before initiating a long process.

I'd recommend the same thing when doing gaming or anything that is cpu/gpu intensive.

[Cigarguy]

90 deg C and the CPU will start throttling down, 100 deg C the damage starts.

[miro_gt]

90 deg C and the CPU will start throttling down, 100 deg C the damage starts.

no damage, just shut down, Intel CPUs are nicely protected since long time ago.

I cant quite say the same thing about AMD CPUs, but maybe those improved over the years... Check out youtube for what happens when heatsink is removed while system is working (desktop in this case) - some AMD chips went smoking

but to the OPs question: I see it as a problem if anything in a laptop reaches the 90 deg C mark, so I consider that to be the limit. Ideally I'd want to top off at or below 85 deg C.