Look hard enough and you can find limits..
Took me quite a bit of reading, but eventually I found this in an AMD paper for my Athlon...
Socket A-Based Processor Specifications
Table 1, Table 2 on page 4, and Table 3 on page 4 list the
thermal specifications of the socketed AMD Athlon and
AMD Duron processors.
Table 1. Socketed Processor Specifications for the AMD Athlon™ Processor Model 6
Symbol Description Max Value Notes
T die
Maximum die
temperature 90ºC
Total die size Die size 129.26 mm 2 Includes L2 cache
A core Core area 105.72 mm 2 Die size not including L2 cache
Form factor Heatsink form factor PGA PGA Socket A form factor
P thermal Max processor
thermal power 72.0 W Required supported power
Which came from this document -
here - so the only question I have now is if that MBM readout I get is the die temperature - because if so I am getting as close as within 6oC of the limit AMD recommend! This worries me - although I have never had a failure yet I seem to be running so much hotter than anyone else!
And I am not overclocking anything! Only idea I have is that it is low profile case - but it does have in/out fans plus PSU fan....