I installed a used Athlon 2400+ into a new motherboard in a used eMachines case and everything is running fine but the BIOS and Speedfan report the CPU temp as 59-61 degrees celsius. Is this too warm for this CPU? I put Arctic Silver on the die/heatsink and the temp only dropped a couple of degrees

BlazeSST

A: Temp I would expect around 40-45

B: Did you clean off the old thermal paste before applying (amount = small rice grain size) Artic Silver. Too much is not good!

actually I didn't clean off the old pad and I did use just a small rice grain size drop so maybe I should do it right and start from scratch by cleaning it all off but I'm not sure how to get the thermal pad off the die. Also one other thing - I have another custom build (Athlon 2500+ Barton) that's about 3 years old and it idles at 60c and I've never had any problems but I thought I better check with someone that knows more than I do to make sure it's not too hot. Some advice I've read says that 60c is ok and others say it's way too warm for Athlons

BlazeSST

Scrape the old pad off the bottom of the heatsink with the edge of a credit card or something similar, then clean off the residue with alcohol...same goes for the CPU core. Once it's cleaned, do NOT touch the surfaces. Put a dab of Arctic Silver of the CPU core, spread it thinly & evenly, then install the HSF.

60C is definitely too warm, especially if that's the "at idle" temp. As a general rule, the system temp should be no more than 10C higher than room temp & the CPU temp (at idle) should be no more than 10C higher than the system temp. Example: room temp at 20C (68F), system at 30C, CPU at 40C.