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vexbegone

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 30, 2014
8
0
I was playing CS:GO for the first time on my 27 inch iMac earlier and the cpu temperature reached 63°C, maybe I am being a little over cautious but could this possibly shorten the life of the cpu? Thanks for any feedback.
 
You're being way over cautious. 63C is fine and dandy, and won't add any wear and tear on your CPU. It's actually pretty good, considering.

General rule of thumb: 75C and below is perfectly fine. 75C-85C is a little on the high side, but isn't actively damaging your computer. 90C and above? That's when you should start showing a little concern.
 
You're being way over cautious. 63C is fine and dandy, and won't add any wear and tear on your CPU. It's actually pretty good, considering.

General rule of thumb: 75C and below is perfectly fine. 75C-85C is a little on the high side, but isn't actively damaging your computer. 90C and above? That's when you should start showing a little concern.

This, for the record we have loads of machines in the QA room running games all day everyday at ~80c for years not had one CPU failure yet.

If anything is going to fail it's usually the LCD screen losing lines through age or the GPU dying. The CPU is one of the most reliable parts in general.

That said you should always try and keep temperatures as low as possible as that's better for all your hardware as the heat radiates to all the other components.
 
I tend to get into the high 70s low 80s (Northbridge chip?) when running games on hot day.

However I have just started using MacFanControl to adjust fan speed when playing games or other intensive programs to keep the temperature lower.

It also monitors the temperature and you can set it to Auto, turn on at certain temps or constant. There is even a Windows version which is really handy when running under bootcamp. Windows seems to make the Mac run very hot even when idle.

I actually found this program after noticing how hot the mac got when running Windows bootcamp.

Out of curiosity what temperature does the mac need to reach for the fans to go full speed?
 
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