If your system suddenly decided to shut itself down, or there was some kind of audible alarm coming from the machine you have never heard of before, would you know what the problem was? A common cause for this is that your computer’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) has reached its critical operating temperature and has shut itself down to prevent damaging it, or an alarm is telling you it’s about to shut down.

There are a lot of reasons why your computer’s CPU has gotten too hot; the cooling fan has stopped working or its airflow is being blocked by dust or dirt, the layer of thermal paste between the heatsink and CPU has gone bad and needs replacing, or maybe the processor is being run at a higher operating frequency / voltage than normal. Something else which can cause this is blocking the cooling vents in laptops and netbooks by placing them on a bed or sofa, which is obviously easy to prevent.

To help understand why this might be happening, a lot of users want to know what the maximum temperature is that a processor can work at before these critical situations occur, and any measures that can be taken to stop it from happening.

Didn’t find what you want? The links below could help:

Check your PC’s Temperatures with Open Hardware MonitorComparing CPU Speed and Performance from Benchmarks ReportsMonitor Temperatures, Voltages and Fan Speeds with SpeedFanTest System Stability By Putting Heavy Load on System Resources