My AMD 64 3200+ has been overheating quite often lately.

When its idling, the CPU temperature is roughly 55, 56C.

Whenever I start doing anything that requires processing (such as games) the temperature quickly rises up.

Depending on the application I am running, the temperature usually levels out at around 88C, or it continues until the computer automatically shuts down at 101-102C.

I'm currently using the stock fan, and heat sink (the fan is almost always spinning at max).

Can anyone can help me determine the problem?

Thanks in advance!

What is the temperature of your room?

I would personally take my current HSF off and re-apply some decent quality thermal grease ( Arctic Silver )
If this doesn't work, I would purchase an aftermarket HSF.
Zalman and Thermaltake make some good ones.

thats terrible, make sure the HSF direction is correct, the casing has adequate fans, no obstruction in exit path (from front inlet to the rear exhaust) and cool and quiet is enabled.

My normal room temperature is around 20-28C on average.

My casing only has one fan which removes the air from inside the tower.

Could the problem just be with the CPU itself? The computer is quite old, around 3 years now.

Had it been performing OK with the same heatsink/fan/case fan in the past? If so, job #1 is to make sure there isn't a bunch of dust and other crud clogging up the heatsink. If that's relatively clean, job #2 is to follow Stein's advice. Thermal paste (especially cheap/stock stuff) is prone to drying out over time. When that happens, it's pretty well useless.

I have the same CPU (Venice) and when my heatsink, a Thermalright XP-90C, gets dusty, it does get warmer, but not that much ... atm it's fairly idle at 30°C. Compressed air would be a good start.

Yup.... I go for taking it out... give it a good cleaning both sink and proc.... reapply thermal paste and remount.... recheck to make sure you have the sink mounted correctly... you got either one heck of a clogged dust bunnies heat sink or that sink is not seated correctly.

Have you tried cleaning the dust off the fans and the heatsink? I would first dust-off the entire pc and add a 120mm fan in the case to move more air out of the box.


AMD Athlon 64 X3 3800+ (2.0GHz) running @ 2.75GHz
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT 2GB DDR400 (2-3-3-6)
http://www.locusart.com

I've been meaning to give mine a good cleaning anyway (just for the hell of it mostly). I've got some IPA and some Arctic Silver 5 ... and somewhere I may have a can of compressed air, but I probably wasted it freezing stuff. ^_^

If you end up going to all the trouble of removing the heatsink,then you should give some thought to upgrading the processor as well...if your hardware, mobo firmware, and OS will support the change without "breaking" any functionality. (e.g. some OEMs are very restrictive in CPU changes) Make sure the heatsink can handle any increased power, but sometimes replacing with a different process CPU can actually reduce the power/cooling requirement.

You also want to inspect the CPU and heatsink heat-transfer surfaces to ensure they are not deformed, have flaws, etc. that would only cause trouble later.

edit to add- If you plan to disassemble/reassemble the CPU/HS assembly, a mistake some people often make is to apply too much heatsink compound. Follow the manufacturer's instructions. You may also want to research "how-to" on-line articles.

Thanks guys,

I'll try all of those methods out after I buy some Arctic 5 and you guys know how it goes in a few days.

For your heatsink/cpu, apply a dollop about the size of a grain of rice in the centre of the cpu.

Dollop of Arctic Silver?

lol ! .... hehe a tiny drop will do .

Dollop means drop, or something

I dusted the HSF, and applied new Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste. The temperature now never goes above 56C.

Thanks a lot everyone!

You really need to get some fans in the front or ur case. You're extracting
heat at the back, but you're not getting any cool air in at the front. So all you're doing
is swirling warm air around the case. Your temps will go down when you sort that out.