Having a cool room helps temperature. It never gets above 30°C in the room my comp is in. I have a dual fan cooling system too, so that helps. Dual ceiling fans, that is. Those things can move a stupid amount of air and are nearly silent too. Of course, that's my room, not my comp. Modern things like air ocnditioning also help my room temp. At night time, open the window, its colder outside than inside at night. That's assuming you compute at night, of course.

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1)Asus A7V266C mobo, 2)Athlon XP 1700+ at standard clock speed (i.e. < 1500MHz), 3)AMD-approved Taisol CGK760092 heatsink/fan (copper-bottom version), 4)Arctic Silver 3 thermal paste, applied meticulously per instructions on Artic Silver website, 5) Antec Performance Plus case with three, count them, THREE 80mm case fans, not including the separate intake and exhaust fans on the power supply, and yet ... Asus Probe STILL reads 54-55C CPU at idle, 31-32C on the mobo - What the !*&?%#!! This is my second HSF on this chip. First one was a Zalman 'flower' cooler, because I don't like noisy computers. According to Asus Probe, that setup idled at 62C, so the Zalman was replaced this very evening with the Taisol. I never even tried the stock HSF, Asus Probe probably would have had a fit if I did. I read somewhere that earlier Asus mobos had a problem reading Athlon chip temperatures. Since all the Asus mobo replies here show pretty high temps, maybe there's still an issue there. On the other hand, Eger's running an ECS mobo, so perhaps the Asus thing is a red herring. The one thing I know for sure, is I'm NOT replacing the heat sink again. The Taisol got decent reviews on all the overclocker sites, it's AMD-approved, its noise level is tolerable, and it has a relatively easy-to-install, 3-prong clip. The only place to go from here is up into the '450 grams of pure copper, with a screaming 7000rpm Delta fan' zone. I ain't goin' there, especially since Mike's Volcano 7+ is approaching that category, but appears to do no better than my current configuration. Even if my CPU does die from heatstroke, at least I'll be able to hear myself think while it's doing it ;-)

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My case temp as i write this is 30c, and cpu 46C it runs around 48c (cpu) when play Unreal or Wolfenstein. I currently have 2 intake 80mm fans, w2 80 mm exhaust and 2 fans on enermax power supply. Not to mention my 2 cool pc.

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I think that anything below 55C for the Athlon XP 1700+ at heavy loads is acceptable (without overclocking). If you are running hotter than that, you should consider making a few changes, such as adding a couple of case fans (they are inexpensive at 5-10 bucks). I have a triple-fan Enermax power supply and 2 case fans, one drawing the air in a the front and one sucking it out at the back, just behind the CPU. I am using the stock heatsink from Athlon. With the case open my CPU never goes above 48C, with case closed it will hit 51C after 6 hours or so of video encoding (can't get a much heavier load than that). The computer room temperature is usually at 25C. I have done several google searches and people with more "extreme" cooling solutions manage to get it down to 35C iddle/39C full load, but it is hardly worth the extra $$$. I would cough up the dough for a XP 2000+ or better before blowing it on cooling. My GeForce2 is the one that gets hot: 53C after couple hours of Quake III. I am using van Kaam's Mother Board Monitor, by the way, it is excellent, kudos to him.

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Here is yet another reply. I reside in western Canada. Our high temp today was 31C. Whew! I have an ECS K7S5A mobo, AMD Athlon 1800+, ThermalTake Volcano 6 HSF (with silicone heatsink thermal compound). I have a generic PSU (one fan) and one case fan. I am also using van Kaam's Mother Board Monitor (5.1.9.1). I concur that MBM is a superior product. I set my high CPU alarm @ 60C and system alarm @ 40C. My CPU is running @ 1.53G, temp = 46~48C and my system = ~30C. I am quite confident the MBM temperatures are accurate, as I compare them between the Hardware Doctor with my mobo, versus MBM. FYI - The only thing I may do is silence the PSU, case & HS fans. For further info, please see www.silentpcreview.com

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