I have an i5 and it used to run up to 100 C when the cooler separated a bit, bought a new cooler the next day.

Now its around 50 C.

The Core chips are all perfectly capable of preventing damage to themselves, as they will gradually clock down if thermals get out of hand. Now the stock cooler is actually fairly mediocre, but as long as it's properly installed then there's no real problem. You may wish to remove it and give it a new coating of thermal grease, or spend the twenty bucks on an inexpensive CM cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064

Even, as he described, under heavy load continuously for 20 minutes?

If you had a Pentium 4 reaching 90ºC at most, with a dusty heatsink, I'd understand.

So OP, clean your laptop, measure idle temps, try to reaseat the heatsink too (thermal paste might have dried up so you'll have to replace it).

ou may wish to remove it and give it a new coating of thermal grease, or spend the twenty bucks on an inexpensive CM cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064

Its a Dell 17 inches laptop.

ou may wish to remove it and give it a new coating of thermal grease, or spend the twenty bucks on an inexpensive CM cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064

Good luck fitting that in a laptop

Its a Dell 17 inches laptop.

Just a question of willpower.

The Core chips are all perfectly capable of preventing damage to themselves, as they will gradually clock down if thermals get out of hand. Now the stock cooler is actually fairly mediocre, but as long as it's properly installed then there's no real problem. You may wish to remove it and give it a new coating of thermal grease, or spend the twenty bucks on an inexpensive CM cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064

LOL thats the exact model I bought :) crazy

How so "for surrounding parts"?

Printed circuit boards are usually rated for at least 180C. Remember they need to handle hot solder and handle thousands of heating/cooling cycles without damage.

The hot solder is only for a very brief time. There is a big difference between a hot flash while the circuits are not powered, and keeping the temperature up for a extended time while running. I don't think any PCB would work very well for very long at 180 degrees, since solder melts at around that temperature.

In my experience, the CPU is seldom the part that starts to fail when cooling is faulty. On my desktop computer, the first chip to fail is the USB controller.

And that starts to happen at around 100 degrees...

By the way, a normal load temp with sufficient cooling should be between 80-90 degrees C, although it depends somewhat on the ambient temperature.

Ambient temperature actually has a massive impact on the ability of the fans to cool down the system. Just one degree up, can make the CPU run several degrees hotter.

I don't think I ever seen a capacitor rated higher than 105C. I'd be checking out the fan or buy one of those cooling docks.

I said it already, I have a fan under it already. Its a blacknoise nb eloop b12-2 120mm at 1300RPM on 12V DC, It serves no visible purpose.

I'd say the idle temp is now at 53, better than the 60+ without the fan.

The policy of the temperature control in the ACPI code for fan control is bringing the CPU at this temperature on purpose.

I have verified it because when both cores pass 100 degrees then the fan finally spins at max speed, with a slight hysteresis cycle for progressive down speeding when it "cools" down back below ~90 degrees. Clearly this limit is by design.