If you're worried about causing damage, your pc will turn off before that happens. That said, high temps will cause your pc to throttle, lowering performance. Low to mid 70's (C) would be normal when gaming. You'll probably start to see some throttling once you get near 85C and if the mobile i7's are like the desktop i7's, the PC will shut off at 105C.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, it doesn't get that hot. Even using Prime95, it maxes at 65c. I'm using coretemp to check.
I was in Southern Europe this summer showing a friend how to use a screen-recorder to capture favourite programs from FilmOn because they had lost their satellite TV access. The laptop ( HP i3 , quad core ) shut down from overheating. I started the process again with Piriform " Speccy" running and it showed cpu/motherboard temperatures of 89 degrees C before the laptop shutdown again. Ambient room temperature was around 38 degrees C. I put the laptop on two bricks with a small fan blowing underneath it and everything ran fine , and continued like this for the rest of the summer . There was no indication of any permanent damage ..... is that any help on the subject ?
Yes thanks for the information. I have a nice Enermax dock with a 120mm fan underneath. I was just asking out of curiosity. It's always nice to know ahead of time.