How hot should 39oC feel?

I've got an Asus motherboard with onboard (Nvidia 6150) graphics, and the northbridge heatsink gets rather toasty to touch. The hottest I've seen in on the Asus Probe is 39oC, which after a quick reboot is a little bit lower in bios.

How hot should 39oC feel? I can't really keep my fingers on it, but bios and Asus Probe seem to agree, and there's no sign of instability so it can't be that hot can it be?

It's a passive heatsink, but it's clipped on rather than the standard holes so I couldn't really upgrade it easily. Am I just having overly sensitive hands or should I consider some thermal glue stuff and a Zalman northbridge cooler?

Cheers

What kind of clips?

Cant you just put a fan over it?

How hot should 39oC feel?

If you are fit and heath you should be around 37oC, so touching something 39oC shouldn't feel much different. If something feels warm all you can really say is it is hotter than 37oC, and if something feels cold it's cooler than 37oC

My old P4 motherboard had a similarly hot northbridge. You could maybe fit a bigger aftermarket heatsink on it or even a fan if it worries you, but I wouldn't worry unless your system is unstable.

In answer to your question, if the chip is 40c, then the heatsink will likely feel warm, but not hot to the touch. The chip itself is probably hotter than is reported, but it's not unusual for the sensor to be wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by manwithnoname

How hot should 39oC feel?

If you are fit and heath you should be around 37oC, so touching something 39oC shouldn't feel much different. If something feels warm all you can really say is it is hotter than 37oC, and if something feels cold it's cooler than 37oC

---

Holy smoke that's the craziest thing I have read today.

Your bodies CORE temperature should be 37c

I do have rather bad circulation! Maybe my hands are just colder than they should be...

I'll take a picture of the clips when I get home tonight. It's an Asus M2NPV-VM. It's a bit of a narrow heatsink so a 40mm fan might be too big, I don't really want to be using electrical tape to hold my computer together (again...).

I might see if I can snaffle a thermometer from somewhere, figure it out one way or another. Probably safe to ignore it, but I do worry. CPU sits below 30oC and feels slightly cool - but the heatsink is about 20x as big with a fan so who knows.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by daniel_owen_uk

Holy smoke that's the craziest thing I have read today.

Your bodies CORE temperature should be 37c

---

How hot are your hands?

May be I am :crazy: but I wouldn't expect my hands to be too much cooler that 37 - unless I put them in the fridge for couple of hours ... or the oven, gas mark 5 until golden brown ... maybe I am :crazy:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by manwithnoname

How hot should 39oC feel?

If you are fit and heath you should be around 37oC, so touching something 39oC shouldn't feel much different. If something feels warm all you can really say is it is hotter than 37oC, and if something feels cold it's cooler than 37oC

---

Dude, that just isn't right, for a number of reasons. First, your hands aren't going to be 37 degrees. That's your inner organs and they have to be around that temperature to live. Your hands are rarely that temperature, mostly less, because they can stand a far greater range of temperatures and there isn't really anything to heat them up apart from air temperature (blood does obviously, but it's going to be less than 37 degrees when it gets to your hands).

Second, the temperature that an object feels like is a lot to do with how well it conducts thermal energy. Touch a bit of metal and it feels cold because it conducts heat away from your hand. A bit of wood in the same room would feel warmer because it doesn't conduct heat away as well.

In response to this question, I just touched my northbridge heatsink at 50 degrees and it pretty much burnt me. Not fun. I actually wondered if speedfan was reading the temperature right cos it felt pretty damned hot.

Oh and as a final, most important note, how something feels to you is to do with temperature receptors of the nervous system, not your body temperature. So at the end of the day it really has nothing to do with your actual body temperature!

I agree, anything around 37 degrees would feel very warm to touch by hand. 37 degrees is your core temperature, but your hands would be much cooler than this.

This has lead me to think now, does anybody know the approximate temperature at which it feels hot and you can keep your finger pushed on it for about 5 seconds, but then after this is starts to become very uncomfortable and you have to take your hand off?

I dont have any working temperature sensors on my mobo (they say like 105 degrees, and -30 degrees lol) and my NB is as above, hot and I am able to stand the heat for like 5secs, but then becomes uncomfortble, and I would just like to know the rough temp it is at :)

You're soft then - I remember being told in school that 60 degrees feels like the hottest temperature that you can comfortably keep your hand on indefinitely. IIRC we did experiements heating stuff in water with a bunsen burner, measuring how hot it was, and timing how long we could hold it. I went to a proper 'ard school, me.

39 degrees will certainly just feel like body temperature - probably your armpit is not far off that, and shouldn't present a burning hazard if you want to try it.

Haha a proper 'ard school? I love it. I think i went to a big softy school.

I don't know what 39oC should feel like actually. I'd have thought pretty warm. And the fact that mine burns me at 50oC does make me think there's something up with the sensor.

My armpit feels warm. If you're really desparate to find out what almost exactly 36.8oC feels like (unless you're sick), there's another place you could put your finger! Ha!

@timtim86 I'm not suggesting that a finger is going to be the best reading of temperature just a bit of a guide.

Point of my orginal post was a chip at 39c is not going to feel too hot.

I've got this other great test: Any one got a chip reporting it's at 100C or above? Pour water on it, if you get steam it is.

Well the results are in, according to a thermometer from a cheap weather station pack it's sitting just below 60oC.

Here's pictures of the heatsink (with thermometer bit), and the clip.

So is 60 degrees ok for a northbridge? Maybe I should email Asus and ask/complain about it. Going to be a mess fitting a fan as it's not a standard size - and I've only currently got 80mm fans spare!

ps the off topic bits really made me laugh, can't beat a Hexus forum for amusing tangents!

Basically, if you can touch something and hold it without discomfort it aint gonna be too hot.

Asus are known to be sloppy with TIM on their heatsinks on mobos, especially on the heatpipe motherboards like the P5W and the Commando. On these boards, most people remove the stock thermal paste and replace it with arctic silver and see massive drops in temperatures. Might be worth a try if you are concerned...

Ah good plan, I'll definitely give that a go. Always the simple things you never think of... :)

On my new M2A-VM board, the CPU is about 6 - 10C above ambient, so about 26C atm (Cool'n'Quiet enabled), but the NB and SB heatsinks are about 40 - 60C.
Is the poor TIM that you mention under these and would some good stuff help? I suppose that temps. aren't high enough to bother. though.

Peter.

Well it's the nasty pink stuff on there, I'll let you know what the temps are shortly, just in the middle of doing it now!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Giraffe

On my new M2A-VM board, the CPU is about 6 - 10C above ambient, so about 26C atm (Cool'n'Quiet enabled), but the NB and SB heatsinks are about 40 - 60C.
Is the poor TIM that you mention under these and would some good stuff help? I suppose that temps. aren't high enough to bother. though.

Peter.

---

You will almost certainly see a drop in temps if you replace the stock TIM with some AS5 or another good paste. However, if you are not planning to overclock or are quite happy with your current temps, its up to you if you want to go through the hastle to drop your temps or would rather leave it as it is :)

Well I've currently seeing a small increase - maybe give it another go soon...

wow, thats a bit of a surprise! Are you are you applied it correctly and not too much?
Also, AS7 takes about 100 hours to cure before it reaches optimum, so you see a drop by a couple of degrees over a few days. But I definately wouldnt have expected a higher temp to start off with :S

yeah. heatpaste on my NB got me down a few degree on my Abit AB9 Pro, or so uGuru reckons. Still think uGuru gives lower than realistic temps. However, something will not feel cool to the touch if its <37* cause thats not really anywhere near your hand temp. 50* water feels pretty hot though as its all to do with the rate of energy exchange so the bigger the change in temp across the surface of your skin, the more you feel it. Different people do have different reactions to heat though depending on the nature of their nervour system and damage caused to that area of the skin in the past (take chefs for example). That said, 39* is not the temp of your NB if it feels noticably HOT. Warm, maybe, but not hot. I'd be a bit concerned if its the heatsink thats HOT as thats a fair bit of distance from the chip; might just mean your passive cooler works very efficiently ofc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Giraffe
On my new M2A-VM board, the CPU is about 6 - 10C above ambient, so about 26C atm (Cool'n'Quiet enabled), but the NB and SB heatsinks are about 40 - 60C.
Is the poor TIM that you mention under these and would some good stuff help? I suppose that temps. aren't high enough to bother. though.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sitalchauhan

You will almost certainly see a drop in temps if you replace the stock TIM with some AS5 or another good paste. However, if you are not planning to overclock or are quite happy with your current temps, its up to you if you want to go through the hastle to drop your temps or would rather leave it as it is :)

---

Not overclocking - running as gently as possible without changing settings in the BIOS.
Just felt the heatsinks (back of the finger is better than the tip): the CPU is 'cold'; the NB is about 40C and the SB is about 50C (it has a very small heatsink), so no panic!

Peter.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by timtim86

...If you're really desparate to find out what almost exactly 36.8oC feels like (unless you're sick), there's another place you could put your finger! Ha!

---

:lol: If you're that desparate to find out, then you clearly are sick...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by manwithnoname

How hot should 39oC feel?

If you are fit and heath you should be around 37oC, so touching something 39oC shouldn't feel much different. If something feels warm all you can really say is it is hotter than 37oC, and if something feels cold it's cooler than 37oC

---

I kind of disagree with you there, right now my hands are nowhere near 37oC - they're bloody freezing!

Skin temperature can be lower than body temperature.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sitalchauhan

wow, thats a bit of a surprise! Are you are you applied it correctly and not too much?
Also, AS7 takes about 100 hours to cure before it reaches optimum, so you see a drop by a couple of degrees over a few days. But I definately wouldnt have expected a higher temp to start off with :S

---

Think I may have a little bit too much on - it's a very small area. I'm not sure how much cooler it can get though - this is heatsink temperature not the chip itself. Maybe a hotter heatsink means it's doing it's job properly...

Anyhow, I'll shutdown and let is cool, then try with a bit less heatpaste.

How hot should the cpu core be anyway? What is too hot?

I think recent core2 processors start throttling at about 72 degrees. The CPU starts throttling before the temperature starts to damage the processor. So I am guessing at about 85 you start damaging your processor. Anything below 65 degrees load I would say is safe.
I think a lot of the heatsink manufacturers are making people get too worried about temps to drive them to buy expensive heatsinks imo, and lots of people are falling into the trap. If you are overclocking, fair enough. But I have seen people buy thermalright ultra 120 extreme to cool a low power chip at completely stock and that is way OTT imo, just to get low temps when they do not even matter as they are nowhere near damaging the cpu...

Your naked skin temperature is about 20-22C which is why 20C is room temperature - it's a very comfortable temperature for a lightly clothed person.

A hot bath is probably about 45C, so 39C would feel quite hot. Most people cannot stand water over 55C (they feel 'burned') and 60C is well into teh pain-threshold of most ordinary people (foundry workers/blacksmiths etc. tend to have a higher resistance as either their nerve endings are dead or the signals are ignored).

pop into a chemists and ask for a childs forehead temperature reader..only cheap :)