# Tcase vs Tjmax



## AVZ (Mar 19, 2008)

A... stupid question, I'd say, for someone who's spent hours and hours overclocking different CPU's  -> If I were to go over the Tcase, the physical CPU case, in which the CPU cores are housed, will start to melt? 

Whenever I have been running Intel Burn tests + Prime95, I have always made sure that, the moment I see the Tcase value hit 71C, I immediately stop stress testing

I currently have an i7 2700k, sitting on a vcore setting of 1.295V (4.3Ghz, stable) - I want to push the thing to a potential 4.6/7 Ghz, which would require going to over 1.35V (LLC 5).

I have always thought that going over the Tcase value (which, by intel, for my chip, is 72.6C) would immediately start doing irreversible damage, the moment it goes over the respective value... however... I've suddenly ended up reading that a lot of OC'ing people have been going over their Tcase barriers, all the way up to ~80C, for a 24/7 setup - will my chip be OK (OK, meaning, I understand that I will speed up its lifespan degradation, but it won't suddenly die at 72.7C, right?)?

Tcase vs Tjmax: right now, at 71C, I hit about 80-85C on Tjmax - 100C is the max - is Tjmax more important, since it's the temperature of the actual cores themselves?

I am aware that the CPU will automatically throttle, when hitting the Tjmax barrier of 100C, but, should I be worried about going over the Tcase value of 72.6C?

If I shouldn't be worried about going over the Intel specified Tcase operating value, what should the max Tcase value, that I go to, be?

Thanks a lot in advance


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## SpywareDr (Jun 15, 2013)

No two CPUs are exactly alike. One might be stable at 4.7GHz but another failed at a mere 4.2GHz. In other words, there is no real way to tell what one might be able to handle in advance.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

TJ max is max temp of cores very low or very high is bad. when you hit the tj max your cpu will shut off before burning.

Tcase is the temp of the IHS above the cores the values are usually 20 degrees lower than when the cpu will throttle (it will not melt) so for example if your Tcase is 72.2 which it is for most sandybridges 92.2 is where the cpu may throttle (not every cpu is the same, even the same make). Above that temperature you are potentially limiting the life span i.e instead of 15 years it might be about 10 years depending on how hot it is.

If the temps were 100 degrees c all the time then there would be major problems.

Tcase is pretty useless as it can only be truly read by cutting a big groove into the heatspreader and using one of those laser thermometers to read it.

Intel basically make a guess about this from one or two processors they have tested.

As long as you keep below at 80 or below you have nothing to worry about.

Just to add core temp for instance usually needs to be configured to get the correct tcase reading whilst real temp does not. I never use the temp monitoring stuff that comes with motherboards like asus ai suite because it's crap.


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