Is there a consensus on max temp?

Reading through numerous threads here, elsewhere and at manufacturer sites it seems everyone had a max red line. But no one agrees!?

AMDs seem to be able to run a lot hotter than Pentiums, which seems to be a good thing for the AMD user because it seems that AMDs actually do run a lot hotter 100% of the time.

I've got a P4 2.6 clocked at 3.0 and I'm keeping it at 49C CPU/38C ambient in a room that is quite hot presently at over 35C (air conditioning is not an option). That doesn't seem too bad. But I don't like pushing past 50C. Just seems to me like the danger zone. Case has two standard fans in the back and today has a household fan blowing into the front of the case. Seems like I'm doing fine. But the air is cooling and it's not too uncomfortable in here. Some days the same config will hit 55C. With kill being rated from 65C to 75C depending on the source of info.

It seems other things might be affected we don't consider, though? A diode or capacitor somewhere going bad could kill a system as well as a CPU frying could. I guess that's roughly covered by the ambient temp, but in my amateur experience with soldering irons and gadgets I know some other things can get darn hot. My old 486 computer would shut down the mouse and keyboard but keep running on hot days, oddly.

A significant amount of time at intel.com (waiting for their servers to respond and serve) reveals:

Thermal Spec 75°C

So, I guess is that the bottom line? Seems a bit warm to me ...

The thermal spec is the max. Thats where the chip will probably fail. You can get instability well below that, so you don't want to get that hot. AMD is hotter than Intel. I've run in the 50's without a problem before, but that's reaching as high as I would want. I'd look to upgrade the cooling or move the computer.

There's only a few days of the year where it gets this hot here, almost always in September which is the official San Francisco summer. The heat is waning and I didn't blow anything. It never got past 54C and I just kept an eye on it (moving the computer isn't an option either: I share a rental house). I guess just common sense tells me going above 50 is getting dangerous. I knew I'd get problems below the kill temp. Having the Asus MB with the Ai configuration helped, I just kept clocking it down and pretty much kept it at 49C even in the hottest room temps.

Tx karsh