Are AMD CPUs prone to overheating?
My AMD 64 3200+ is at 34C right now, with the heat on in the room. I think part of your problem is how much air is going in and out of your system. It’s not a case of sticking 16 120mm fans in the case and thinking it’s enough. You need to balance the airflow taking into account turbulence and airflow paths. I would suggest you upgrade to a better case with good airflow. My system has 2 undervolted 120mm fans, they run slow and silent. And a PSU with an 80mm silent fan, so my system is based around negative pressure, the 120mm fan at the back along with the PSU fan hot air out of the case, a 120mm fan sits by the harddrives sucking air in, along with air sucked in via airvents in the case. The wires and cables are all neatly folded out of the way, or tied down using multipurpose nylon ties, and sticky base mounts holding it down. This allows for air to flow through the case without the turbulence the wires and cables cause.
AMD chips do tend to run hotter than Intel, but not that much hotter, heh. I haven’t bothered cleaning out my heatsink/fan since I bought this Athlon 2600 . . . 2 years(ish) ago. It’s running right now at 55C/129F using the stock heatsink/fan. That’s quite a bit on the hot side (I need to clean), but survivable. As a rule of thumb anything above 60C is just bad news, period. 88C is not. The first thing I’d do is, as everyone suggests, clean it out. The second thing I’d do is visually inspect the thermal transfer sticker (or the artic silver paste) on the bottom of the heatsink. This is what’s responsible for getting all that heat out of the chip and into the heatsink – and I’ve seen both paste and stickers degrade *seriously* over periods as short as a year, so make sure yours is OK. If both of those fail to provide any indication as to the nature of the problem, your choices are to buy a new heatsink/fan or sent it back to AMD for a replacement. I’d opt for the latter if I were you.
I downloaded and installed MBM 5. It’s telling me: Case: 38C CPU: 48C I started a CPU intensive compression job two minutes ago and the temps have risen 2 degrees. At the 3 minute mark and the job is starting to thrash the hard drive. Temps are still at 40 and 50 respectively. 4 minutes: 41/51 5 minutes: 41/51 I’d say that neither brand is particularly prone to overheating, but most people don’t even put in a moment of thought as to airflow and heat removal. I want my PCs to run quiet, so I get big cases, huge heatsinks and big, slow, quiet fans (if any). I have to think about how heat travels in the case. Many name-brands have some thought along the same lines, but most home-built PCs I’ve seen are just a thick mat of cables.
I’ve owned a number of CPUs over the years, and the only CPUs that have overheated or been damaged by heat were Intel devices (well, one was a motherboard chipset and not a CPU, it was still Intel’s). AMD processors typically are rated for rather impressive levels of heat output, but like I said, they are rated for it; it’s hot, but it’s not overheating. A proper cooling subsystem, well-maintained and free of dust and cat hair, is likely to last years and keep heat problems at bay.
