Core i7-720 running extremely hot

I have a dell studio 1747 laptop, refurbished. It is sitting at ~70c when doing basic tasks, after a bit of gaming it has peaked at 97c. All these temps are from HWmonitor laptop is running windows 7 ultimate. Am I going to fry my cpu? Should I rip it apart and replace the fan? Is this a decent temp for an i7? From what I have read no processor should really go above like 70ish under FULL load.
thanks in advance for any suggestions
 
i7s (and nearly all other nahelem processors) will run hotter than previous generations of quad-core cpus, especially inside a laptop. i don't think you have too much to worry about, but if you have access to the processor without to much disassembly you may want to consider applying a more conductive thermal compound, to suppress the heat a bit more. you may also want to check if the cooling fan is working properly like you said.
 
there may be a heat pipe transfer under there but it's very unlikely that the CPU itself is around that area. when the processor is getting hot, you will probably hear the fan spinning up or if it's getting really hot you may notice some performance issues. if you aren't experiencing any stuttering, freezing, or blue screens then i wouldn't worry about it. the computer is designed to prevent the processor from fatal overheating anyways so if you haven't been warned then I doubt that will happen.
 
oh okay...well thanks for your help. Yeah it starts to slow down sometimes when it gets hot, just don't exactly have the money to replace an i7 so I figured I would make sure it was alright :)
 
Then again, it is true that most processors don't make it past 97c.
IMO thats too hot but apparently you don't have too much to worry about.
 
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