wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jan 2019 08:30:32 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

I am processing movies and the CPU is indicating
100%.

Where can I see the temperature of the CPU?
Peter


I followed the suggestions and discovered that my CPU is running at
99C Is this good? bad? or indifferent?

You fix it.

You fix it for *two* reasons.

1) When it rests at Tmax like that, it's throttling.
That means, it inserts a "No Operation" or NOP into
the instruction stream at regular intervals, to cool
off the CPU. This causes the time to convert your
movie to increase (not good).

2) The materials the CPU package are made of, are at
their temperature limit. The silicon could likely
be heated to 135C. The 99C limit (enforced by the CPU)
is related to the organic packaging. At one time,
CPUs came in ceramic packages, and the packaging was
less of an issue, and the silicon simulation temperature
and max die temp were the limits back then. Today, the
"package is the first thing to go".

If this is a laptop, you clean the fins on the CPU heatsink
(that the blower blows through). In addition, you verify the
fan rotates freely, without ruining the bearing by pressing
on it too hard. Don't jam a kitchen paring knife into
the bearing to clean the fan. It's delicate. (I ruined
a fan and that's how I know :-/ )

On a desktop, you have the option of "re-engineering"
the cooling. You can replace the thermal paste.
You can use a cooler with heatpipes and extra large
fin array. For example, my CPU runs at 43C when running
Prime95, and the cooler is so big, it has a "support leg"
to hold it up :-) When I encode a movie, nobody gets
in my road.

In addition, on a desktop, you have the option of buying
a new video card. The new card has "NVenc" block in the
video card, and can convert H.264 to H.265. If the video
card does the conversion, it runs 10x faster, and the CPU
just "sits there and watches in disbelief". The video card
only gets moderately warm (as only the video block is running),
and the CPU is back to room temperature or so, because it's almost
idle while the movie is converted. NVidia has NVenc and
AMD has VCE. If you have a copy of Handbrake, I think there's
a status screen that shows whether the subsystem has the
correct driver installed and is ready to go.

Video card encoding isn't always the best quality
(single pass), but the sample I looked at, looked damn
good. It almost looked like the conversion had applied
a tiny bit of sharpening or something.

No matter what your CPU is intended for, there's no excuse
for it sitting at 99C. Someone didn't do their job right
if that happened (too small cooler, blocked airflow etc).

Paul