Optimal CPU And GPU Temperature While Gaming[Updated]

Optimal CPU And GPU Temperature.

Playing games on PC causes your PC to run on full load. While your PC is running on the full load it can produce heat. That is because your CPU and GPU both hit the temperature at 80-90C or 176-194F. Overheating a gaming PC is not an issue only for you. Many gamers notice their PC is overheating. The reason for overheating could be several. We’ll talk about that later in the article.

Your system temperature is something that you need to keep your eye on. Especially while gaming your system utilization reaches the peak. Keeping the CPU and GPU temp at optimal or at least on a safe mark can give you a lot of benefits. Ranging from FPS boost in a game to extending PC components life span.

In this article, you’ll get to know what is optimal CPU and GPU temperatures. Why PC gets overheated? How you can keep track of your system temperature and many more. So read through the whole article.

What Is The Optimal CPU And GPU Temperatures While Gaming?

Without any head around here is the straightforward answer to this question.

The normal or optimal CPU and GPU temperature while gaming is 65-75C or 149-167F. You should not face any kind of problem while your temp is lying in between that. However, you can hit up to 85C or 185F due to a long gaming session and overclocking.

Still, 85C is not too bad for CPUs and GPUs but also not optimal temp. You may not notice any difference right away in your PC but it surely does in long term. Modern CPUs and especially GPUs can hit 85C and will be fine. This is because nowadays game utilizes your GPU more than the CPU, though that was not the case a decade ago. Both AMD and Nvidia know the fact that modern games’ GPU utilization is relatively higher so GPUs are meant to be running hot.

If your CPU and GPU are hitting more than 85C or 185F temp. Surely it means your system will get overheated. Modern components won’t let it burn if hit beyond the max temp rather prevent damage from overheating the CPU might throttle down itself. And If you were in a gaming session the GPU might do the same thing. In some cases, your PC might shut down itself or you may see a blue screen of death.

CPU Temperature For Gaming

As I mentioned before the optimal CPU temperature is 65-75C. It is what you should expect when you are doing CPU-intensive tasks like video editing and online streaming or even sometimes gaming. Besides optimal temp for CPU, another measurement matrix is the maximum CPU temp before starting throttle.

Temperature Table For Intel Desktop Processors

Generation	Series	Processor	Max Temperature
11th Generation	Core i9	11900H, 11980HK, 11950H, 11900K, 11900KF, 11900T, 11900F, 11900	100°C
	Core i7	11800H, 11850H, 11700, 11700T, 11700KF, 11700K, 11375H, 11370H, 1180G7, 1185G7E, 1185GRE, 1160G7, 1165G7, 1185G7,
	Core i5	11260H, 11400H, 11500H, 11400T, 11400, 11400F, 11500T, 11600, 11600K, 11600KF, 11500, 11600T, 11300H, 1145G7, 1140G7, 1145GRE, 1145G7E, 1135G7, 11
	Core i3	1115GRE, 1115G4E, 1110G4, 1115G4, 1125G4, 1115G4, 1120G4
10th Generation	Core i9	10920X, 10900X	94°C
		10980XE, 10940X	86°C
	Core i7	10710U, 1065G7, 1060G7	100°C
	Core i5	10510U, 10210U, 1035G7, 1035G4, 1035G1, 1030G7, 1030G4
	Core i3	10110U, 1005G1, 1000G4, 1000G1
	Celeron	5205U
	Pentium	6405U
9th Generation	Core i9	9920X, 9900X	92°C
		9940X	88°C
		9960X	85°C
		9980XE	84°C
		9900KS, 9900K, 9900KF, 9000, 9880H, 9980HK	100°C
	Core i7	9700K, 9700KF, 9700F, 9700, 9750HF, 9750H, 9850H
		9800X	95°C
	Core i5	9600K, 9600KF, 9400F, 9400, 9300H, 9400H	100°C
	Core i3	9350KF, 9300, 9100, 9100F
	Celeron	G4950, G4930
	Pentium	G5620, G5420
8th Generation	Core i9	8950HK	100°C
	Core i7	8086K, 8700K, 8700, 8700T. 8850H, 8750H 8559U, 8650U, 8550U, 8809G. 8709G, 8706G, 8705G, 8305G
	Core i5	8600K, 8600, 8600T, 8500, 8500T, 8400, 8400T, 8400H, 8300H 8269U, 8259U, 8350U, 8250U
	Core i3	8350K, 8300, 8100, 8109U, 8130U
		8300T, 8100T	82°C
		8121U	105°C
	Celeron	G4920, G4900	100°C
		G4900T	88°C
	Pentium	G5500T, G5400T
		G5600, G5500, G5400	100°C
7th Generation	Core i9	7940X	102°C
		7960X	98°C
		7980X	94°C
		7920X, 7900X	95°C
	Core i7	7820X	99°C
		7700T	80°C
		7800X, 7740X, 7700K, 7700, 7920HQ, 7820HQ, 7820HK & 7700HQ, 7660U, 7600U, 7567U, 7560U, 7500U, i7-7Y75	100°C
	Core i5	7640X, 7600K, 7600, 7500, 7400 & 7440HQ, 7300HQ, 7360U, 7300U, 7287U, 7267U, 7260U, 7200U, 7Y57, 7Y54
		7600T, 7500T, 7400T	80°C
	Core i3	7300T, 7100T	92°C
		7350K, 7320, 7300, 7100, 7101E, 7100H & 7167U, 7130U, 7100U	100°C
	Celeron	G3950, G3930, 3965U, 3865U
		J4105, J4005, N4100, N4000	105°C
		G3930T	92°C
	Pentium	G4600T, G4560T	92°C
		G4620, G4600, G4560, 4415U, 4410Y	100°C

For other generations and model numbers, you can also check Intel Website.

Temperature Table For AMD Desktop Processors

	Series	Processor	Max Temperature
Ryzen 5000 Series	Ryzen 9	5950X, 5900X	90°C
		5900	95°C
	Ryzen 7	5800X	90°C
		5800	95°C
	Ryzen 5	5600X
Ryzen 3000 Series	Threadripper	3990X, 3970X, 3960X	95°C
	Ryzen 9	3900XT, 3900X
		3950X	90°C
	Ryzen 7	3800XT, 3800X, 3700X	95°C
	Ryzen 5	3400G, 3600XT, 3600X, 3600
	Ryzen 3	3300X, 3100, 3200G
Ryzen 2000 Series	Threadripper	2990WX, 2970WX, 2950X, 2920X	68°C
	Ryzen 7	2700X	85°C
		2700	95°C
	Ryzen 5	2600, 2600X
Ryzen 1000 Series	Threadripper	1950X, 1920X, 1900	68°C
	Ryzen 7	1800X, 1700X, 1700	95°C
	Ryzen 5	1600X, 1600, 1500X, 1400
	Ryzen 3	1300X, 1200

For other generations and laptops and APU’s, you can check AMD official website.

GPU Temperature For Gaming

For GPU though the optimal temperature is 75-80C assuming the GPU utilization is at 100%. Even if it reaches 85C most of the time you’ll be fine but it shouldn’t cross the limit. If you have proper cooling you might not even hit 80C anyways.

Nvidia GPU

Series	GPU (Founders Edition)	Max Temperature
GeForce 30 Series	RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070, RTX 3060, RTX 3060ti	93°C
GeForce 20 Series	TITAN RTX, RTX 2080ti, RTX 2080 super, RTX 2070, RTX 2060 Super	89°C
	RTX 2080, RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2060	88°C
GeForce 16 Series	GTX 1660ti, GTX 1660	95°C
	GTX 1660 super	93°C
	GTX 1650 super	90°C
	GTX 1650 (GRRD5)	92°C
	GTX 1650 (GDDR6)	94°C
GeForce 10 Series	GTX 1080, GTX 1070ti, GTX 1070, GTX 1060, TITAN XP	94°C
	TITAN V, 1080ti	91°C
	GTX 1050, GTX 1050ti, GT 1030	97°C
GeForce 900 Series	GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980	98°C
	GTX 950	95°C
	GTX 980 Ti	92°C
	TITAN X	91°C
GeForce 700 Series	GTX 720, GTX 730, GTX 740, GTX 770	98°C
	GTX 710, GTX 750, GTX 750ti, GTX 780, GTX 780ti, GTX TITAN Black, GTX TITAN Z	95°C

For older than 700 series GPU and Laptop GPUs, you can check Nvidia’s official website.

AMD GPU

While AMD doesn’t mention the maximum temperature for their GPU on the official websites, assuming and should be around 90-95C for most AMD Radeon GPUs.

What Causes The CPU And GPU Temperature Skyrocket With Solution?

Before knowing how to monitor temperatures in your system and fix them, we should know the reason behind high temperatures. And there could be several reasons for max out CPU and GPU temperatures. One logical reason could be overused. If you gaming for 8-9 hours non-stop, the system will get hit up. The other main reasons are…

Dust

Problem: Your PC will get dusty over time. Not only from outside also inside. All the dust eventually gets stuck in your CPU heat sink and on your front dust filter. Causes blocking the intake air to come inside your cabinet. This leads to another problem which is poor airflow.

Solution: Clean your PC regularly. Cleaning the dust inside the PC can be challenging. My recommended method is to use compressed air or some kind of blower that can blow off the dust from the PC. Keep the CPU heat sink, CPU fan, Cabinet fan also GPU fan clean.

Poor Air Flow

Problem: Poor airflow inside your cabinet is another reason for CPU and GPU temperature hit skyrocket. Poor airflow can occur due to lack of having don’t enough fans inside the cabinet or as I mentioned before, dust stuck in the front mesh. Every cabinet should have at least one intake fan and one exhaust fan.

Solution: If you don’t have enough fans installed in the cabinet, invest money in some fans first. The more fans installed in a cabinet the better airflow would be. On average 3 for intake and 2 for exhaust can do a pretty good job. Also do keep in mind that you fit them in the right direction.

High Ambient Temperature

Problem: This is one of the important issues that most people don’t give much attention to. High ambient temperature indeed will make everything hot, your PC is not an exception. No matter how good your airflow is if the room and air itself are hot, the temperature inside the cabinet will get hotter. If you are living in a location where the ambient temperature gets too high especially in summer, your PC will get overheated.

Solution: Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to fix the issue. There is a bit of money involved in the solution. Investing in a good air-conditioner can decrease the surrounding temperature quite a bit.

Thermal Issue

Problem: Another area where most people don’t look often is the thermal paste used in CPU and GPU. Over time the thermal paste loses its efficiency and causes temperature increase. It’s not only for CPU but also for GPU.

Solution: The solution is pretty simple. Clean the pre-applied thermal paste with Isopropyl Alcohol and apply a new one. You should change your thermal paste every 6 months. Here is a video guide to properly apply thermal paste.

Overclocking

Problem: Overclocking is something that most people and gamers don’t do often. However, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. You can overclock both your CPU and GPU. If you overclock, it indeed increases your CPU and GPU temperatures. If you wanna have the advantages that overclocking gives you, learn about CPU overclocking and GPU overclocking.

Solution: Well it’s not quite a problem that should have a solution though. People do this purposely to gain some performance. Overclocking does increase the system temperature and to keep it cool, simply follow the above solutions.

How To Monitor Your CPU And GPU Temperatures While Gaming

Monitoring the CPU and GPU temperatures is quite easy. It is a matter of installing software. If you wanna know the temperature of every component, not just CPU and GPU, you can install HWMonitor software. But you can not see the current temp while gaming.

For CPU monitoring both AMD and Intel have their own utility software that you can use. As well for GPUs, there is official software available from AMD and Nvidia.

CPUs

AMD Ryzen Master

AMD’s CPU utility software for monitoring not only the temp also other matrices like current utilization, clock speed, voltage, and much more.

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility

Intel Extreme Utility Software if for monitoring intel CPU. Useful for not only monitoring stats also for overclocking.

GPUs

For monitoring GPU, you can use the Nvidia control panel for Nvidia GPU and AMD Radeon software for AMD GPU. The good thing is that this software usually installed with graphics drivers.

Monitor CPU And GPU Temp While Gaming

To keep monitoring the temperature you can use the most popular MSI Afterburner. MSI Afterburner is very useful for GPU overclocking, monitoring voltage and temp, etc. It works with both AMD and Nvidia GPU. Cool thing is that using Riva Tuner installed with MSI Afterburner allows you have an overlay of your CPU and GPU stat while gaming.

What Are The Cooling Solutions For CPUs And GPUs?

Sometimes having a poor cooling solution can lead to CPU and GPU temperatures increasing. Investing in the right cooling system is as important as choosing other components for your gaming PC. There are 3 cooling solutions available for both CPU and GPU. Depending on which cooling have, it can impact a major temperature difference.

CPU

1. Air Cooling
2. Liquid Cooling
3. Custom Liquid Cooling

GPU

1. Open Air
2. Blower Fan
3. Custom Liquid Cooling

Which Cooling Is Best For CPU

All these coolants have their own pros and cons. There are many factors you need to look at before investing in the right cooling. Air cooling is the most common option. In fact, the stock cooler that comes with your CPU is an air cooler. AMD’s stock coolers give you better performance than Intel’s.

However, if you’re not satisfied with the performance you can look for an aftermarket air cooler. That gives you way better results. Liquid cooling is another option that most people are willing to use. Instead of air, it uses propylene glycol and distilled water as a liquid by circulating it on the CPU’s surface.

For liquid cooling, you can use either AIO or build your custom liquid cooling loop. I personally don’t recommend custom liquid cooling because it is way more complicated to set up for a new pc builder or even if you have a little bit of experience. AIO on the other hand has involved some work to set up but is relatively easy than custom cooling.

So which one is better? Performance-wise liquid cooling is better than air cooling. But there are other factors are involved too like price, reliability, usability, etc. I encourage you to read about Liquid Cooling Vs Air Cooling in detail.

Which Cooling Is Best For GPU

For GPUs, there are 3 types of cooler available. 1. Open Air 2. Blower Fan 3. Liquid Cooling. Depending on type and quality each cooler performs differently and produces a different result from one another.

Open Air

This is the most common type of cooling you can find on most graphics cards. It has an open heatsink and depends on the model uses 1-3 fans for cooling. Open-Air cooler takes the air through the fan and blows through every side of the GPU. Every aftermarket card uses Open Air cooler on their GPUs. Also, these cooler are often recommended for gaming PCs.

Open Air has some drawbacks too. As the hot air blows hot air through every side of the card, temperatures inside the cabinet might get increase, and thus the other components temp too. It is recommended to have a good airflow inside the cabinet.

Blower Fan

Compared to Open Air, the blower fan cooler works the same but is a little different. Having a close heatsink on a blower fan can only blow the hot air outside of the cabinet. This is also the type of cooler that is often seen on a reference card. This cooler is good for the cabinet that has poor airflow.

Performance-wise blower fan cooler performs slightly below open-air. Also, it produced more noise too.

Liquid Cooling

Last, we have liquid cooling. Similar to CPU liquid cooling it works exactly the same. Using liquid to cool the GPU by circulating on the chip surface. Building your own custom liquid cooling on GPU is extremely hard and expensive. In fact harder than CPU liquid cooling. However, performance-wise this is the best cooling you can have on your PC also it produces less noise than the other two.

Unless you’re a PC enthusiast, custom liquid cooling is not recommended for you. Generally speaking, if you’re a normal PC gamer, you don’t need custom liquid cooling anyways.

So, which cooling is better? Open-air is the most common and it is something that is often used inside most gaming PC. Factors like performance, noise level, etc. open-air cooler are better than blower fan cooler.

How High Temperature Can Effects Your Gaming PC

You might be wondering what could go wrong if my PC is running at a high temperature for too long. Well, in terms of performance you might not be seeing any differences at all. CPU and GPU temperatures could go up to 80C during gaming, you’ll not see any fps drops.

However, if you cross the safe limit(up to 85), your processor or graphics card will throttle down to protect itself. And that’s where you can notice some fps drops. Besides performance, the high temp can affect components’ life span, so keep in mind that too.

Conclusion

So that was the guide on the optimal CPU and GPU temperatures while gaming. You get to know about safe temperatures for your hardware, what causes the temperature increase, how to fix them, what you should follow to keep cool your PC.

I recommend you to if you face any kind of heating issue, look for the problems in your computer I’ve mentioned and try to fix them. While modern CPUs and GPUs designed and manufactured in a way that they can protect themselves from overheating. But, for safety do always keep monitoring your temperatures using the software I’ve mentioned.