Here's the deal, My son and I just did several upgrades to his computer 1) from 80 gig ata to new Seagate 320g sata hd 2)New Maddog 18x DVD r/w drive 3)upgrade amd XP2000 to USED Amd XP3200 4) upgrade from 1 g 2100 ram dual channel to 2 New 1 gig sticks Pc3200 ram dual channel 5) reload windows xp sp2 6) new 550W Maddog PSU Base system (items reused with updates) MSI MB KN8 Delta Raid Max tower Thermaltake Volcano HS with 80 mm fan Artic silver ATI 9600xt video Audigy soundblaster 2ZS 120 MM rear exhaust 80mm side and 2 80 mm lower front fans Now CPU temps are through the ceiling! 65-70 degrees C at start-up and unit is shutting down with minutes/seconds. have manged to get into bios and check voltages and set to default. XP3200 was recognized after doing this but CPU temps are being reported as too high, MB beeps as it should and unit shuts down. we have reinstalled H/S just in case we did that wrong, to no avail. I guess what I need is baseline FSB freq., Vcore, agp voltage , etc , etc. baselines so I can start from there. Could I have settings too low one place and not enough in another setting? Anyone? Thanks trying to do it right

Correction to one comment I made earlier, which you all probably figured out anyway; Could I possibly have settings in the BIOS to high on one and too low for another? Bios advanced settings do allow for increasing voltages and staying within parameters(doing slight overclocks) and does issue warnings in red what not to do, but we've stayed at default. Could there be a hardware conflict that needs to be addessed? reset? trying to do it right

"we have reinstalled H/S just in case we did that wrong, to no avail." One question is that did you reapply a new fresh thin layer of thermalpaste when you reinstall the heatsink??? TMP-Man Asus P5P800 PAT P4 506 @ 4009Mhz 1.3v Thermaltake CLP0024 w/ 1700RPM 92MM + AS5 2GB OCZ 2-3-2-5 DDR400 120GB/300GB 7200RPM HD Leadtek 7600GT AGP 590/1600 VF700 ALCU AS5

More than likely, you installed the HSF incorrectly...either you used too much or too little paste (or none at all), or you installed the HSF backwards. You probably didn't need to change any BIOS settings. The new CPU & RAM *should* have been auto-detected. If you want to manually configure the BIOS settings, set the CPU multi at 11x, CPU Freq at 200MHz, CPU voltage at 1.65v, RAM freq at 200MHz, the RAM timings at 2.5-3-3-11 @ 1T, lock the PCI/AGP at 33/66MHz, disable any Spread Spectrum settings, set the AGP Apreture at 128MB.

BTW, what's an "MSI MB KN8 Delta"? Generally, K7 is used for socket A boards (Athlon XP) & K8 is used for for socket 754 boards (Athlon 64). See if you can find your board on this list: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/...

Ok, ok...I probably goofed alittle on the MSI MB model, but to clarify alittle it is a Socket 'A', Board NForce 2...I was doing this from memory as the computer has now made its way to college with my son and I'm doing this long distance. As to the thermal paste, artic silver was used by my son who also installed the cpu and H/S himself along with the memory. He then brought the computer here during a visit and I installed the HD, DVD and OS. I am going to have him remove the heatsink again , clean the surfaces of both the processor and h/s and re-apply paste correctly. I'll also re-iterate to him as to aligning the H/S and CPU properly prior to locking it all down. I do appreciate the power info settings you supplied and will have him check those too. I'm hoping this is the error we made and I'll let you know. Thanks again trying to do it right

Just to be clear, when applying the Arctic Silver, you only need a small dab about the size of a BB or grain of rice...more is NOT better. Just place the bead on the CPU core & spread it as evenly as possible. Here are the instructions: http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/app... And tell him to make sure the heatsink is installed the correct way. There's a notch along one edge of the heatsink that is supposed to correspond with the step in the CPU socket. If the heatsink is installed backwards, it won't make full contact with the core & the CPU will overheat & could possibly fry. Don't do this! That's a picture of a CPU & HSF that I removed from a PC that a friend brought to me for repair. Not only did he use WAY too much paste, but the heatsink was backwards too...lol