I was just playing Leisure suit larry1 a little while ago when my temp alarm went off. My system heated upto 70c while playing lsl1. How can this be? When I play new games (raven shield, matrix, gta3, ect.) my cpu has never gets that high. It happend with lsl3 too. I do have high temps anyways but still not this bad. Any ideas?

Is Leisure a 2D game? A 2D game puts more stress on the CPU. A 3D game puts more stress on the GPU.

If your computer runs hot, it will run hot no matter you play games or work with programs that require high CPU time or GPU time or memory time. Even CD burning will get the heat up there. The question is did you use proper heat transfer material between your heatsink and CPU. P4 3.2 does not use transfer pad, it should come with "grey" color heat transfer compound in a tube.

ya I've got artic silver on it. It's the stock HSF and it sucks. I recently odererd a watercooling kit from cooltechnica.com. I'm pretty sure Derk is right. Thanks for the help.

Temp reporting is not an exact science...are you sure you're actually hitting 70C (158F)?...that's pretty warm. Are you having stability probs or lockups? Does your system seem to slowdown? It's quite possible that your temp really isn't that high, but since it's being reported as such, it's triggering your temp alarm. I'd try playing that game again & get the temp up as high as possible, then shutdown, open the case & carefully cop a feel of the heatsink...if it's hot, do what you gotta do, if it's not, a BIOS update may correct the temp reporting error. Otherwise, if it doesn't seem hot & a BIOS update isn't available (or doesn't correct the temp error), bump up your alarm threshold a little bit.

I'm running on the abit IC7-MAX3 wich very well may give false readings on temp (7c?). I tell ya this MAX3 is NOT worth the money too many problems. The CPU is very hot to the touch. My watercooling system should be here in a few days. So then everything should be good. I just can't believe lsl cooks up the cpu so much. Someone posted the link to this article on abits forum http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/qa/2003/2003052801.htm it says that the P4 is able to handle upto 135c before it shutsdown. I always thought that you were killing it around 100c.