New i7 27" iMac too hot - above 80 degrees

[max777]

After about 45mins of gaming in bootcamp under windows7 have a look at the result.

The seems way too hot - 80 degrees?? Sometimes the CPU gets close to 90!

Does anyone know if these are normal/acceptable temps for 2010 iMacs?

I read that CPU temps should generally not go much above 50 degrees. I would assume running at 80degrees is not good for the hardware long term?

 

[Hellhammer]

What were you doing? If you were gaming, it's not that abnormal but still pretty high.

 

[max777]

yea gaming (one of main reasons I bought this machine).

Only for about 45mins of bioshock2. Bit alarming. I can get it to jump up to 80 degrees by playing any game for a short period.

Wonder if anyone else with a new i7 experiences these temps?

 

[henrikrox]

hm a bit worrying indeed, do you have any fan controls? if so you can try to crank them up aswell. also i think the gpu temp is high aswell. but 90 degrees on a intel cpu isnt uncommon, they run hot compared to amd, but still. its high.

 

[flatfoot]

The temp threshold of the i7 processor is 99°C, so 80°C isn't dangerous yet.

Apple tend to have their priority on quietness of their systems and accept higher temps as a trade-off.
What I would do is romp the minimum fan speed up a bit using smcFanControl. When rebooting into Windows, this setting is retained and your CPU should no longer run that hot as quickly.

 

[dekka007]

80 is fine for the i5 or i7. Don't sweat it until it hits 105c which it wont and auto shutsdown.

My macbook pro i7 runs at 80+ most of the day under stress

 

[henrikrox]

The temp threshold of the i7 processor is 99°C, so 80°C isn't dangerous yet.

Apple tend to have their priority on quietness of their systems and accept higher temps as a trade-off.
What I would do is romp the minimum fan speed up a bit using smcFanControl. When rebooting into Windows, this setting is retained and your CPU should no longer run that hot as quickly.

Isnt there any windows based software that work with the fans? I mean, if you have to set in osx then restart into windows.

Sounds like a hassle after you are done gaming and wont to just do some stuff in windows besides gaming. But the fans keep running on high speed

 

[max777]

thanks dekka007, great to hear 80 is ok for i7. See if i can get to 100!

i might look at a win based fan control. does seam apple favours quietness (a good thing in my book)

 

[bolen]

I wouldn't be worried about 80C. It's a totally normal temperature while gaming on laptops.. and since the iMac is pretty much a laptop due to the limited space and desktop-type CPU it's bound the become quite hot.

If you're paranoid you could simply max up the fans with smcFancontrol in OSX before booting the machine into Windows and the fans will run at contant max speed in Windows. Feels a bit unnecessary though.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Well, one second...

I'm not so sure those are accurate.

For instance Temperature Monitor on OS X says the CPU is running (right now) at 140 degrees fahrenheit BUT the cores are all in the 170-180 (or even higher) fahrenheit area and that's just not correct at all.

Some of the "cores" it's reading aren't real physical cores so it doesn't make a lot of sense.

See:

If the back of the machine REALLY was reaching these temps I'd be cooking my hands on the hardware and it's not that hot.

Even my G5 2.5 sat 177-180 fahrenheit with its liquid cooling but and heated my room up but not this one.

So I know that the machine while running at 100% processor can generate high temperatures, but I think SOME of these temperatures are "phantom" readings from somewhere.

Checking: Right now my CPU temp is 140 but Core 1-8 are 169, 171, 167, 169, 169, --- (?), 169, and 168.

 

[byron_hinson]

As most others have said - 80 is fine, not really bad at all for that processor especially in gaming terms. I used to run at just over 90 on my gaming machine with an i7 and a GTX 295!