How hot's too hot?

pita82

Honorable
Sep 18, 2012
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10,560
Hi,

I just bought a laptop for the first time. It's a basic laptop, with an AMD A8 processor and built in graphics. I'm using it to play some games and it gets pretty warm to the touch. I was just wondering how hot is too hot for the computer and if there's a way to monitor it and protect the hardware.

Thanks!
 
Solution
Laptops are going to get quite warm, especially when doing heavy tasks like gaming. Also, they can have vents on the bottom that are essentially blocked off while it is sitting on your lap. Download CPU-Z and GPU-Z, it will provide you information on your processor, MOBO, and GPU temps. In general, your CPU should stay around 70-80c at full load, you probably don't want it going much higher (I did not look at the specific thermal thresholds of your CPU), and about the same goes for the GPU. The best solution to keep the laptop cool at this stage is to buy a laptop cooling pad, some have integrated fans that will blow air into the laptop further cooling it, but simply unblocking any vents that are present on the bottom of the laptop...

chugot9218

Honorable
May 8, 2012
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10,660
Laptops are going to get quite warm, especially when doing heavy tasks like gaming. Also, they can have vents on the bottom that are essentially blocked off while it is sitting on your lap. Download CPU-Z and GPU-Z, it will provide you information on your processor, MOBO, and GPU temps. In general, your CPU should stay around 70-80c at full load, you probably don't want it going much higher (I did not look at the specific thermal thresholds of your CPU), and about the same goes for the GPU. The best solution to keep the laptop cool at this stage is to buy a laptop cooling pad, some have integrated fans that will blow air into the laptop further cooling it, but simply unblocking any vents that are present on the bottom of the laptop helps as well.
 
Solution

burntpizza

Honorable
Jun 23, 2012
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10,520
Hey, got a A8 too, A8-3510mx is the name.

To monitor the temperature, download core temp and set it to autostart upon startup.

I would call 80C a threshold for medium Usage. 90C sparingly usage.

However, the i5s and i7 commonly reach 90C, so it really depends on how lucky you are.


On minecraft mine gets to 65C pretty often. on skyrim around 80C.



If your temperature is even lower than mine, you are not doing it right! Overclock :pt1cable: , if you have the A8-35XX version that is
 

pita82

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Sep 18, 2012
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10,560



Okay, I installed hwmonitor and it didn't have any temperatures listed. So I removed that and installed CPU-Z and can't find a temperature listed there either. Could you tell me where I should be looking? Does my computer not have a sensor for it maybe? Thanks.
 

morbious81

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Sep 11, 2012
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Get yourself a good cooling pad if you're going to use the laptop for gaming. If it's one of the ones with a discreet GPU on top of the GPU built into the APU you may feel the GPU heat up from time to time while gaming. Mine sits under the left hand side of the keyboard and I can always tell when its being used by the surface temp. General rule of thumb is to keep CPU/APU under 80 C. download a program like CoreTemp to keep an eye on your temps.


Sorry, I started typing this and never submitted it....