So my computer had been running games really bad for quite some time. I built my computer at the end of December '04 and could never figure out what was going wrong until today. I was just playing around on my computer and looked at my motherboard monitor and realized that at idle my CPU is running at 68 degrees celsius. So I went to my BIOS and saw that thermal throttling was cutting back my CPU's power to 50% once it got up to 70 degrees, which it got pretty far above when I tried to do something like play a game. So, just to see if this was it I set up a big house fan up to the open side of my case and blew a bunch of cold air at the CPU and sure enough my games were running smooth again. (I also changed some BIOS setting so that thermal overide is at 80 degrees and takes 62.5% of CPU power). I was just wondering, how abnormal is it for my CPU to be at almost 70 degrees celsius just idling? And also, I don't want to keep a giant fan next to my computer, so is there an estimate on how many fans would be good for my computer, right now I just have one fan that came with my processor. I need to figure out some kind of cooling solution. Thanks for any help you can give. Thomas AS Rock PV488 Mobo Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz w/ HTT 1 GB PC-3000 RAM 512x2 Radeon 96000 PRO 128MB 400MHZ clock speed Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

You said you built your computer. Something might be wrong with your cpu fan/heatsink. You should remove it, clean off the gunk, re-apply new thermal compound, and then re-install it. Pentiums don't run that hot at idle (Even a prescott core would be at a lower temp at full load). Even without case fans, it should run just fine (unless if your case is pretty bad or the PSU is having problems). If you choose to upgrade the cpu fan/heatsink, you should look into a zalman cooler, or a thermalright xp-90 or xp-120. It'll improve cooling, as well as letting your system run quieter since it doesn't need to spin the fan as fast as before.

Good advice from ... I have a 3.0 Prescott and it runs about 47-48 idle and 60-62 on heavy use.

Thanks for the help guys, I actually was able to fix the problem for just $4.99. I went and got an 80mm case fan and set it up as an exhaust fan and my idle temp dropped from 68 to 46. Thanks again. AS Rock PV488 Mobo Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz w/ HTT 1 GB PC-3000 RAM 512x2 Radeon 96000 PRO 128MB 400MHZ clock speed Sound Blaster Live! 5.1