Am 06.02.2012 17:59, schrieb Mike:
> Thank you all for the concern, I have already looked at some cooling solutions.
> But this is the only application causing this issue.
> I have some other that use the cpu fully, but the temperature never raises so
> high.
> It is strange.

Not really. Having 100% CPU load just means that /some/ component of the 
CPU is maxed out. With most applications that bottleneck is the 
interface to main memory, and even that could operate much faster if it 
wasn't for the inherently slow DRAM technology employed for main memory. 
So even with 100% CPU load most of the silicon may still be idle most of 
the time; it's just that there's no way to utilize that idle time for 
anything useful.

POV-Ray, on the other hand, runs a lot of stuff straight out of the 
processor cache, which uses the much faster SRAM; so it can keep the CPU 
well fed with data, and really busy it with actual work, like performing 
high-precision floating-point arithmetics.


Another thing to know is that the i7 CPUs probe the temperature at a 
different location than earlier CPUs, closer to the actual heat sources, 
resulting in a much higher temperature readout. Maybe today's CPU meters 
compensate for this with a fudge factor, but at least when I bought my 
own i7 they didn't, so the temperatures you're worried about do match 
what I oberved myself, and may actually be safe after all.

With contemporary intel CPUs, Probably the best sign for cooling quality 
is the actual CPU clock speed. The i7 auto-adjusts this according to its 
current thermal situation, throttling it when in risk of overheating, 
and even increasing it over the nominal speed as long as the temperature 

rest assured that it feels perfectly comfortable (provided of course 
you're not forcing it to that clock frequency via the BIOS).

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