6820HK possible overheating issue - should I be worried about lasting damage?

[friedd0g]

Hi guys,

I recently bought a second hand Alienware 17 r3 that I believe was refurbished. It came from an online second hand retailer and initially the system seemed in mine condition. The specs are:

I7 6820hk
980m with 4gb ram
Windows 10
16 gigs of ram

The odd thing about this laptop is they installed a new version of windows ten but didn't add any of the alienware software - it does however have the bootscreen.

It has been performing fine and I have been playing the witcher 3, i did however download msi afterburner last week to monitor framerates and temperatures and have noticed that my GPU max temperature has been slowly creeping up from 69 to now 73 over the past week. Today I turned on the temperature gauge for the CPU and had a shock. It was hitting 92 degrees in game!!!

The fans were working but I feel like they may not be working as hard as they were a few weeks ago? Though I can't be sure.. Could the lack of alienware software be causing problems?

Any one have any ideas why this could be happening?

Have I likely caused long term damage to the CPU? although it seems to be working fine it could have been overheating without me realising over the past few weeks...

Any thoughts?

Cheers

 

[Runding99]

Hey Friedd,

Is the CPU holding at 92 degrees while gaming? The reason I ask is because if you use a CPU temp monitoring program like CPUID HWMonitor, it is common for the one of the CPU cores to spike up into the 90's range for a split second when in fact it's average is a good 10-20 degrees lower (this is why i don't pay much attention to the "max temp" data in the temp monitoring software).

The best thing you can do is to watch the CPU temps on a 2nd monitor while the system is under load to ensure you are not seeing an anomaly.

Also, for whatever it's worth, your CPU is rated up to 100 °C so I wouldn't worry about any immediate damage. What you may see if running hot for extended periods of time is quicker deterioration of the thermal paste which will cause the CPU temps to climb higher and higher over time and lessen the lifespan of the CPU.