Are my CF-53 idle and load temps ok?

Hi Folks!!

I picked up a seemingly little used Toughbook CF-53 on eBay these days.
In toto I'm very happy with this machine, having switched from a t61p, which is quite a different beast in many regards.

This machine has the i5-3340M and I've upgraded the RAM to 16GB. The standard 5400 Hitachi HDD is still in place. I've also upgraded the wifi to an AC 7260.

The one thing that bugs me is the CPU temps I'm seeing. I'm getting light use/idle temps at normal room temps between 50 and 60 degrees C. Under a full load stress test with "prime95" it maxes out at ca. 88 deg C without throttling back, which seems ok.

My OS of choice would be Fedora, but I have also run Win 8.1 and 7 on this laptop. The temps were slightly lower with 8.1, where it idled just around the 48-50 mark under light use mostly.

The machine looks clean. No dust clogging the fan grill, etc. Doesn't look much dinged about either.

Is it normal to see these kind of numbers? Or should I be worried?

Thanks!

 

That's not bad,I have a CF-F9 that was running 97C. That was bad. Get rid of the 5400rpm and get a SSD,I find the drive temps will drop 10+ degrees (F) so that should help total temps a tiny bit,and it will run a lot faster.

 

Thanks for your quick reply, safn1949!!

I agree, the HDD should go. The obstacle I'm facing there is a tiny 6 star security torx head that I have no tool for [it being Sunday] ;-).

I'll chime back in with updated temps once the SSD is in place!!

 

Lowes has a nice torx security driver.

 

Thanks for the heads up, Shawn!

 

Your 53 must be different than mine, no security torx head. My 53 is a MK1 with 10,000 hours. i5 , W7 64bit, 16gb memory with 240gb SSD. Boots up in 18 seconds.

 

@toughasnails:

I think when you buy them new Panasonic supplies a torx screw that can be used to "secure" the access latch to the hdd compartment. And the previous owner seems to have made use of it in my case.

My CF-53 is the mark II.

BTW, I have now disabled turbo boost in the BIOS and the temps I'm seeing are still idling somewhere along 50 C, but under load it never heats up much more than 70-75 C.

 

I recall a security screw on my CF53. I replaced it with a standard screw.