Core i7 720 Temperature

mikeynavy1976

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Feb 14, 2007
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It's been a while since I've had a laptop. I'm guessing that due to the form factor of a laptop it is more difficult to get great cooling, as compared to the giant coolers you can stick in a desktop. I just got a Core i7 720 and ran Real Temp 3.4. I noticed two things. Real Temp seems to have trouble with the Turbo Boost as my clock speed was never steady, and many times was showing below 1.6 Ghz. I verified it's ok with CPU-Z. The other thing I noticed, however, was that at idle the temps (Real Temp shows for the 4 cores) were around 55C. I'm used to my overclocked desktop (Q9450 @ 3.4 GHz) being right around 40C at idle. Is the 55C on the i7 normal?
 

damithagg

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Mar 13, 2010
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I have the exact same problem. Have the HP dv7 and it idles at 49 or so. I was playing the sims 3 watching the temps rise and it climbed to above 80 within an hour so I shut it down to let it cool. I spent a little extra for a lappy with a video card in it so I can occasionally play a game on there but this thing really heats up. Do I need to call hp or is there something I should do?
 

digitalanalog12345

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Apr 17, 2010
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I have a dell 1557 which is pretty much the dell counter part of the dv6t wit i7 4gbs ram and a decent video card

right now, with a laptop cooler plugged in since startup, my computer is idling at 59 degrees

when it starts to get used a little more it goes up to about 70 but rarely 80, so no auto shutoff

with no laptop cooler, it is unusable, you can use it for an hour or so, then it blue screens and shuts off, and will not startup again until it is completely cooled, which takes about 20-30 minutes (that thing is hot!! I flip it over and let the heat rise out of hardware)

so the verdict is, i7 and laptops just don't mix, I read somewhere that the vaio takes heat very well, but it is a lot more expensive, as with the macbook pro (snow leopard blows windows 7 out the water)

so get a laptop cooler to make the computer usable, and it is now a desktop than you can take to the bathroom or something and watch while you are pooing, but not the most mobile laptop.
 

mitchellmacdonald

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Mar 8, 2013
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I have an Asus N61JQ-X1 with upgraded ram hdd and video. On idle I run at about 55 -70c which I know is way to high, and under load I get almost 95c. So I really wich I knew the answer to this crap since this is waaaay to hot
 

unclewebb

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Sep 11, 2007
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RealTemp T|I Edition
http://www.overclock.net/t/1330144/realtemp-t-i-edition

CPUs are updated all the time, so is software. There have been quite a few updates to RealTemp since version 3.40.

The multiplier in a Core i7 processor can be very dynamic depending on how you have your CPU set up. If RealTemp shows your multiplier rapidly changing when lightly loaded, it really is doing this. CPU-Z is a MHz validation tool. It sometimes hides what your CPU is really doing so you get a consistent validation.

I seem to recall that your CPU has a minimum multiplier of 7 so when lightly loaded, it might be dropping down to 933 MHz at times. The Core i7-720QM runs hot as hell. It puts out a lot more heat than the previous Core 2 Duos.

If it makes you feel any better, Intel considers any temperature below the thermal throttling temperature to be a "safe operating temperature" so there is no need to worry. Hopefully your laptop manufacturer is using components on the motherboard that can stand up to this kind of heat.

Edit: Here's some more info.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=728331