My cpu recently told me through my temperature programs that it was running at 86 degrees celsius and it has been staying around those temps for a while yet still running. what could be wrong? thanks

Blow the dust off your cpu. Remove CPU Fan clean and add Arctic Silver paste. Make sure the fan is up to speed. Go in bios and lower the D Ram ratio to 1:1 also try dropping VCore voltage. If you are overclocking your Front Side Bus (your Ram)your processor will run hotter. A 2.6 Processor will run at 13 times the speed of the in mhz of your fsb setting. Your ddr 400 runs at 200 mhz so the processor runs at 13X200mhz or 2.6 Ghz. So, the higher you set the FSB the hotter it runs. Any temp over 75 degrees C...put your finger on the CPU fins. Is it really hot or not. If not change to Arctic silver. It Could be a false reading. I presume your motherboard claims 800mhz FSB (actually 200mhz X 4)if not lower the FSB until the temperature drops. Your processor will not last long at a constant 85 C. Last, if your bios won't let you change anything, googleup WCPUID/CPUZ for tools to do it. Oh yea, check and clean all your case fans and the PSU fan, too. Spring Cleaning. LOL

Hey Duck, Do us all a favor - do some reading or take a class in PCs before answering any more questions in these forums. What is this obsession of your's with the CPU:DRAM ratio? Lower the vcore? Why would you tell him to do that? The only reason to lower it would be if it was for some reason, increased above the default voltage. Luke, The P4 is thermally protected so you don't have to worry about frying it, at least not by overheating. You do need to investigate that temp reading though because if it is accurate, your CPU is "throttling". This program can check for that: http://www.panopsys.com/throttlewatch.php Are you getting the temp reading from the BIOS, or from a monitoring program? If it's a program, check the BIOS to make sure the readings are the same. BTW, what motherboard to you have? You may wanna do a search to see if temp reporting errors are common for that board. Sometimes, a BIOS update will correct it. You could try touching the heatsink to see if it feels hot. Just get the CPU up to temp, shutdown, pull the power cord (for safety), then reach in & touch the heatsink. 86C (187F) is scorching hot. If it only feels warm, you probably have a temp reporting problem. Duck does have a point about cleaning dust from inside the case, fans, heatsink, etc. But if you're relatively certain the heatsink was installed correctly & some sort of thermal mateial was used, I see know need to remove it & apply Arctic Silver. But if you decide to go that route, follow these instructions: http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz 512MB PC3200 Asus Ti4200 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro

abit and asus motherboards wrongly report temps.....best way i know to get a true temp is a temp probe placed as close to the cpu core as possible without actually placing the probe between the heatsink and core, off to the side a little....i saw in one forum where the guy drilled a hole in the heatsink on the side towards the center above where the core would be and placed the probe inside, even though that temp will be off slightly, it's still better than the bios,software monitoring Abit AS8 LGA775 2.8 @ 3.36 2 x 512 Geil Ultra Platinum PC4000 @ DDR480 128 meg Radeon 9800 Pro DUAL 36 GIG WD Raptors 21 in. 19.8 viewable Sony Trinitron 4 Mbps cable connection

I am using an ASUS P4P800 and i was using a software program not BIOS. I recently got an $120 cpu fan because i plan to overclock more and a system guardian which measures temps and case fan speed. It tells me that my cpu is about the same as BIOS. @ 3.0ghz it is about 33 degrees celsius. I have downloaded a BIOS update to try and reinstall/update BIOS but i am having trouble getting into DOS. I have tried making a boot disk but without much luck. Any help would be appreciated.