ASUS A8Jr

And I thought my laptop’s CPU was burning.

I recently purchased an ASUS laptop (yeah, notebook is the new school term) and I’ve been writing about my reservations about running it on Vista. But I’m stuck with it since it came with the laptop.

Now the specs of the laptop is pretty decent for a “mobility” model. It runs on Core 2 Duo and packs 2GBs of RAM (with an upgrade). I really just use it for blogging, writing and some research work. Some of my friends say it’s such a waste of hardware especially if I don’t get to push it to its “full potential.” I can actually play games with this one given the specs and it even has a DirectX 10 compatible video card.

So I gave in to their prodding and decided to give it a spin. I installed a few 3D apps and a graphics-intensive game to try out how my laptop performs. And part of my little experiment was to make sure I don’t push it too hard. Increased CPU load means heat. And excessive heat is always bad news for your laptop’s lifespan. These babies have a much more complex cooling systems compared to desktops. I ran a CPU temperature monitor called Core Temp and had it running in the background while I loaded the game just to make.

The initial readout was a low 44°C for both cores which I thought was the advantage of having a dual-core processor. The thing is, when I fired up the game and got around to playing it for a good while I noticed that the cooling fan kicked in and warm air was flowing through the vents. I exited the game and checked the logs (Core Temp can keep temperature logs, too. Neat, huh?). To my horror, I saw a figure there that reads 70°C!!!

I’ve dealt with overheating problems before with my desktop and 70 degrees Celsius is supposed to be high enough to fry my old single-core P4 desktop. I tried different temperature monitors and confirmed that yes, during gameplay, my laptop’s CPU’s temperature spikes up to as high as 70°C. I panicked, thinking that it is in no way, normal.

I Googled far and wide to no avail. The closest thing I’ve got to temperature information about Intel Core 2 Duo processors was from Tom’s Hardware. And it only discussed Core 2 Duos for desktops. According to the Intel website and Core Temp, the TJunction (the maximum temperature at the junction between the processor die and the PCB it sits on) for my processor was 100°C. Sure, 70°C is still 30 degrees lower than that but that got me scared since 100°C is water’s boiling point and maxing the temp out isn’t a good thing at all. It’s like redlining your car, just a bit more and your engine will blow. The Tom’s Hardware forums post pegged 70°C as a reason to be alarmed since 75°C is the supposed red line for Core 2 Duos. In any case, I had my reservations since the post focused on desktop Core 2s and not mobile ones.

New model cooling systems prompts the fan to just kick in after a certain temperature is reached. And I’m positive that it started to blow hot air through the vents so that assures me it’s not a fan failure.

Since I considered myself as a valued customer, I checked the ASUS website and failed to find an answer there. So I just decided to contact their technical support and ask for the safe temperature ranges (for the CPU and the HDD) for my laptop. A good four hours after, I received an e-mail from one of ASUS’ tech support engineers telling me that:

The normal temperature for the HDD is 50~70 Celsius and [for the] CPU 60~80 Celsius.

My HDD temp readout is a constant 40°C so I guess that’s great for my case. As for the CPU, the increased load brought about by intense gaming only raised my temp smack dab in the middle of the safe range of 60-80°C with a readout of 70°C. So that answers the question.

Now I’ve been pondering about this on the level of theory. How come. One thing that I could think of is the fact that mobile processors do not have integrated heat spreaders so they’re built to stand a max TJunction of 100°C as opposed to a different thermal specification for desktops (which have integrated heat spreaders).

I’m no engineer so any thoughts on this one?

In any case, I’m now confident I could “safely” use my laptop even if it clocks 70°C for the CPU. I do have a 2-year warranty on this thing and I have proof that I’m still within reasonable use with that e-mail from an ASUS tech support engineer. And for good measure, I got rid of the game

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