The safety of using a stock cooler temporarily

Question

So, my situation is that I'm in the process of upgrading my PC and I just got my new case 2 days ago. I've moved all of my parts over, except for the CPU cooler. This is because it fit in my previous case, but this one is smaller so it does not. I knew this, so it wasn't a surprise and I'm planning on getting a Cooler Master H100i within the next couple of weeks. Right now I'm using a stock intel cooler for the cooling of the CPU. I wanted to know if it would damage my PC to use it for gaming or any CPU-intensive processes. I'm completely fine with bumping up the fan speed to whatever it needs to be to keep it all cool, but I just want to make sure it won't damage anything while I'm waiting for my new cooler.

My specs:

• CPU: Intel i5 4670K
• Case: Corsair Air 240
• Motherboard: ASUS H97I-PLUS
• RAM: 2x8GB DDR3
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 1070
• Power Supply: Antec 850W
• Storage: 2 SSDs - 500GB & 250GB

Answer 1

Since the stock fan is designed to run along with the CPU it should be completely fine if you don't do some vicious overclocking. No?

To be completely on the safe side you can install some software to read out the thermal sensor of your CPU. Which one depends on your system. For Windows I personally like Everest Home Edition, which nowadays apparently is called AIDA64. For Linux there is lm_sensors, but the kernel will also usually put this information in /sys/class/thermal/...(something)

Also note that while running on very hot temperature will wear out a CPU faster, there is a safety shutdown mechanism built in that prevents an instant death in most cases.

Answer 2

It would be best to chime in here with a different answer.

The importance of knowing the effective TDP (Thermal Design Power) of the CPU itself and the cooler is very important.

As I answered in this question: My core 2 quad q6600 is 90c while in the bios (H/W monitor) (with intel stock cooler) the TDP of the cooler should either match or exceed that of the CPU in/on your motherboard. If it does not, you will find that your system will not behave as intended, even if you under clock the CPU.

In your question you have not made it clear if you are planing on using the factory provided heatsink/fan assembly (factory cooler) that came with your processor or not.

If you are, then there will be no issues, as it's using the intended cooler.

If you are not, then I would strongly urge you to find out if the cooler will be compatible with the TDP of your processor.

Intel states that it's cooler specifications are PCG 2013D for your processor, being that it has a TDP of 84W. Information isted here: http://ark.intel.com/products/75048/Intel-Core-i5-4670K-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

Answer 3

Yes, but only if it is the stock cooler for whatever CPU you are going to use, it should keep temps within reason at stock speed. Still, if you would like to run something like AIDA64 64 for 20-30 min. I'd say anything 75c and bellow is perfectly acceptable, but if don't trust the temps just don't use your PC until the new cooler arrives.

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P.S. an Intel CPU will thermal throttle at around 90c and if you end up running prime95 I've heard the newer versions push the CPU excessively and generate an unrealistic amount of heat.

Answer 4

As long as you're running it at stock speeds - and the 'original' thermal paste is 'intact' and not dried out or replaced, the original heatsink the chip was shipped with should be perfectly adequate.

However, if your machine is overclocked (since its a K processor), you may want to redo your overclocking settings or bump it back down to stock.