the problem is my cpu is overheating and causing my system to automatically shutdown within 2 minutes or so what ive done: I've tried 3 different motherboards and the same problem occurs, first thing i did was go into bios and monitor my cpu temps. what happens is it starts around 50c or so and sky rockets to about 100C within a minute or so before it shuts off. i've tried putting on a fresh coat of thermal paste as well to no avail, it didnt even slow it down at all. should i just buy a new cpu? i havent been able to flash bios because it shuts down before i get a chance too. current system: xp pro Intel Core 2 due e6850 GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard 2 gigs patriot extreme performance ddr2 800 (pc 6400) nvidia 8800 gts

It's not a motherboard problem or a CPU problem, it's a HSF installation problem. If your HSF didn't come with a thermal pad preinstalled, you should have applied a small thin line of paste down the center of the CPU, parallel with the core(s). Here's the instructions: http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/app... Other than that, the HSF must be securely attached to the board: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.... http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread....