Interesting thread. I cant believe intel has stated an absolute max temperature of 61.4*C for my cpu (e6300), however they have not provided anyone (developers ets) with the appropriate tools / information with which they could design a temperature monitoring program. So they have said "keep your processor under XX*C for reliable operation, but we have no way of measuring the absolute temperature. Once processors start being affected by degradation caused by overheating, what will they do? Ask the end user if they ran it out of spec! How do we know, we dont know its temperature! Intel appear to have designed a loop hole, sidestepping their responsibility to the customer. If they stated a DTS value and said keep over that for reliable operation it would be different. However even using the DTS value is dubious - it is simply a fixed number (85 or 100) at which the program tells you the cpu shuts off at - the REAL temp may be above or below that number. It is calibrated so when any given processor is at its individual and unique max temp, DTS = 0.