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Ok, so once I was messing with a program called fanspeed which lets you control your fans. Well, I turned all the fans to like 20% to try to see how low I could have the fans while still keeping a stable temperature....well...I went browsing some forums or something and ended up forgetting about it...well...suddenly my fans start going like really loud and I remember and bring up fan speed...iirc the cpu temp was in the 200F range....This was with an AMD Athlon 4800+ X2 64 btw...
My hardware still works without any problems(except for a possible shortening in lifespan)

I know that of course, the cooler the better, but really what is the highest safe temperature for CPU, harddrive, GPU, ect?

It differs, fore the core2, that safe temp is like 65 celcius, but i dont know about amd, however what i do know is that with intel it is usually not a big problem if it gets too hot, either the performance degreases or the computer shuts down and after its cooled of a bit i usually works fine again. That is not the case with amd, so be aware.
I have had some pretty hot harddrives, gut it never has had any big influence and as for gpus that allso varys much. I remember having one of those old nvidia card 400 geforse 2 400 something, i think, the fan usually burned out after a short periode of time, but they worked just as fine anyway, allthough they did burn out eventually. Today gpus get very hot and i dont recomend adjusting the fan speed.

that all i have to say bout that...

Simple: Get the datasheet for the hardware in question, usually avalable from the vendor. (Example: Core 2 Duo datasheet, AMD power and thermal data sheet.) They carry information on thermal limits .

My standard operating temperature is 50°C using Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz Northwood + AC Super Silent cooler. I was into overclocking, and when reaching FSB=108, temperature grew to 65°C. But this CPU isn't suitable for overclocking - i began to hear static from speakers . Of course a quick reset fixed everything up
I have some type of hybrid GeForce, with passive cooling I think, and it overclocked pretty well - from 250/143 to 290/300 without any graphics anomalies or system instability.

The maximum temperature for CPU is 90°C, for motherboard 85°C (not sure but I've read that the motherboard would automatically shut itself down), and for GPU... don't know. Maybe 100°C ?

For me I don't care if PC is quiet or noisy. Shame that SpeedFan couldn't increase the fan speeds on my PC

Regards
inflater