Mobo and CPU temps?
 

When does warm become hot?

I was just patrolling around my BIOS settings and part of it proudly proclaimed that the mobo was at 29 degrees, and the CPU was at 39 degrees. Fans were whizzing away at various RPM.

I couldn't find any reference to whether that was a good thing, or not.

That is pretty good, normally thing tend to shut down at 70° (depending on your bios settings, of course, some say "shut down" automatically) or they melt once they get a little bit higher

Considering the heat from modern processors, that's a good result.



(Says he who doesn't have the side parts on his PC case so maximum cooling is there. I have to clean the dust out more often, but that is something people should normally do every 3 months)

The upper limits on my Intel Active Monitor for Motherboard and CPU are set at 65 for the motherboard and 69 for the CPU. They both go into the yellow at 50.
So yours sound fine. Mine are currently showing as Motherboard zone 1 = 38, zone 2 = 35 and CPU = 42
Hope that helps.

The Intel support site will give details of maximum temperatures for their processors - it's not always easy to find, good keywords are thermal management. I guess AMD will provide the same info somewhere.

But I'd go along with the others - CPU at 39 is 'cool', nothing to worry about there.

" he who doesn't have the side parts on his PC case so maximum cooling is there"

Not necessarily - the case is designed to pull in air at a certain point and provide a flow over the hotspots. If you increase the inlet point by removing a cover you are reducing the flow to almost nothing and relying on convection alone.

That sounds almost chilly!

My desktop and laptop CPUs both vary between about 32 off-load and 45 on-load. The motherboards are around 6 - 7 degrees cooler.

The scary bit is the GPU. My desktop is around 55 most of the time. The hard drives in the desktop report 31, 37, and "NA".

My old laptop CPU used to get to 80 quite often, till I added Thermpath to the chip cooler/chip interface. Didn't do it any harm - daughter's still using it all the time.

Frosty, I noticed that even with this Antec case it would get warmer with the sides on and also the dust levels would be higher.

Works for me

Re dust levels, my desktop case takes filters, which I wash each month. Quarterly. Oh, I don't know. Anyway, consider third-partly filters if you case doesn't support them natively.