CPU operating temperatures?

Greetings,

I picked up a new laptop about four months ago—a Dell Inspiron 15. It’s running an Intel Core i5-4210U 1,7Ghz processor, an NVIDIA GeForce 940M, and 8GB of RAM. I have a bit of a question regarding heat—the manual mentions a maximum operating temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. Right after getting it, I installed Open Hardware Monitor to keep an eye on things. When I'm just watching movies or letting it idle, the temperature stays steady around 40 degrees. If I start working in MATLAB (Simulink), SolidWorks, or AutoCAD, it climbs to about 50 or 60 degrees—which seems perfectly fine to me. However, when I fire up something like Resident Evil 5, the temperature jumps to anywhere between 75 and 85 degrees—and honestly, that feels a little high. I was hoping to get some insight from the more tech-savvy folks here—is this range acceptable or should I be concerned? Just as a side note, I keep the laptop sitting on a cooling pad.

Thanks in advance. Have a wonderful day.

If you ask me, everything seems totally normal here. The tasks you mentioned aren't really pushing the graphics card at all—but then again, Resident Evil 5 is a game that actually demands some muscle from the hardware. It makes sense that the GPU would heat up during gameplay, which naturally bumps up the temperature for that component and the rest of the laptop too.

It’s perfectly standard. Some gaming laptops can hit 95°C under load, and honestly, that’s just their normal operating temperature.

The main thing is to make sure you aren't choking the air intake—like if you're running it on a bed, for instance. You also need to remember to clean out the dust occasionally and maybe swap out the thermal paste every now and then.