Hi Guys, hopefully you can help! Please excuse any newbie ignorance. Ive had my PC for a couple of years now with minimal problems but recently the CPU fan has become pretty noisy during intensive proc operations. In the hope of solving this, I took off the HSF to clean (I also greased the fan bearing after being recommended to do so). All clean and dust free I have reattached the heatsink and fan onto the MB but found that on powering up the PC the fan starts spinning at 4000+ rpm (noisy!) and doent stop, and on consulting 'speedfan' found that the CPU temp is also 70C+ idle. I also cleaned the graphics card fan at the same time but that appears fine. Any clues? Any help would be really apprieshated! Cheers, Jack

Did you clean off and re-apply thermal paste to the bottom of the Heatsink ??

I havent actually, its only the residual on there at the moment. Didnt have any left at the time, Ive got some on order so will do so if you suspect that will be the problem. many thanks!

Well, Duh? Why do you think that stuff was on there to start with. I wouldn't run the chip that hot.

How long did you run the computer without new thermal paste ? I would be concerned about possible damage to the CPU, but maybe that won't be a problem.

Everything runs comfortably, even when things were 80C+, I read that pentiums have an auto cutoff anyway I think. A friend managed to get his running at 200C before it cut off (so he tells me!). Im looking at getting a better heat sink and fan as this one is pretty noisy at whatever rpm. When I had things apart I looked for the socket size but without any joy, is anyone able to tell me how I would go about finding it? Thanks again

"A friend managed to get his running at 200C before it cut off (so he tells me!)" That's total BS. Even 90C is high enough to trigger a shutdown, or at the very least, cause the CPU to throttle down. You're making a HUGE mistake running without paste. Your CPU is either a socket 478 or socket 775. And the so-called socket 775 isn't a traditional socket at all.