I am having trouble with My cpu overheating. At one stage when I turned the pc on and looked in the bios for the temp at idle speed it was running at 79 degrees. Another time it was at 31 but continued to climb up to 50 in a short time before I turned it off. The cpu fans revs vary from 0 to 50000 (or somewhere around that mark) The revs seem to be random, jumping all around the place. The thing is when I take the side off the pc and turn it on and watch the fan I can't notice any difference in speed. It seems to running at the same speed to the naked eye. I have added no new hardware. Changed motherboards in case it was a mobo issue,and replaced memory. And have a 400watt power supply (only 3 weeks old) I want to know if it is a power supply issue or a fan issue the motherboard isn't overheating though This just happened all of a sudden, no bsod's no warning messages and no failed boot attempts prior to this happening today Any help would be appreciated My spec are k7vza mobo duron 1.2 cpu GEforce 440mx 64 mb video card onboard sound 1 burner 1 40 gig hard drive thanks in advance

Try a new HSF. You can get a Volcano 7 for $16.95 on PriceWatch

79 C is indeed too high a temp! (50C for an amd duron 1.2 isn't all that unusual.) But if your fan sensor is reporting speeds of 50 thousand rpm, something is wrong with the sensor, so I'd have to wonder if the CPU temp reading is maybe incorrect too.

Absolutely get another HSF. Get one that's copper and without thermal tape. Use a thin coat of thermal grease or better yet, lap the contact surface and use NO grease at all.

Actually, on their web site AMD strongly recommends the use of thermal tape instead of thermal paste, unless you plan to be uninstalling and reinstalling the heatsink fairly frequently. BUT DO NOT EVER INSTALL WITHOUT EITHER GREASE OR TAPE !!!!! The thermal material is essential to form a contact between the CPU and heatsink surfaces that has NO air (which is the worst heat conductor). You may think that they ywo surfaces are perfectly smooth, but they in fact have minute (even micrscopic) imperfections that create air pockets when the surfaces are joined. Paste/tape fills these in.

thank you for the replys I replaced the fan and heat sink and all seems to be working for now running around 41 degrees and RPMs are at 4688