How hot before I need to back off

[newton]

Just built a fresh rig. AMD Athlon 64 3000+. It's running at 33C on stock cooling, and I think that's actually pretty cool. I'm planning on experimenting with overclocking, but I want to know how hot it will get before I need to back off on OCing. Say, 40, 45 degrees?

 

[Snake-Eyes]

Truthfully, the temp should be somewhere under where the chip starts to essentially melt. Personally, 50-60C is the absolute max.

 

[newton]

But I meant how hot before it gets unstable? I'm not willing to push a brand new CPU to 50C.

 

[reggie_da_man]

Anything at or under 50*C during full load is fine. I had my 3000 at 2.65GHz for like 8 months, and it never went above 45*C. That chip will overclock quite nicely. Don't worry about pushing it to 50*C. The max reccomended temp is 65*C so it's all good.

 

[Snake-Eyes]

But I meant how hot before it gets unstable?

Really, that more or less depends on your mobo. In the BIOS, it'll have a warning beep/alarm @X temperature setting, and a shutdown @X temperature setting.

 

[jonny_uk]

mines 40-42 when im just doing little tasks like msn, surfing, listening to music etc

 

[reggie_da_man]

Yeah but you have a dual-core CPU. Big difference.

 

[lancec2c30]

hey reggie did you OC that one with stock cooling? how far have you gotten you dual core??

 

[reggie_da_man]

I was able to get up there on stock cooling on my Athlon 3000+ but I bought liquid cooling a bit later. Now with my dual-core so far I'm at 2.945GHz prime stable. Here's the link: http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?threadid=114709&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

EDIT: Keep in mind my Athlon was stable at almost 3GHz on stock cooling (this was the only screenshot I could find, I'll look around for some more).