Recently my computer has been running at a higher temperature than usual, 50 C (cpu) 32 C (case), usually my cpu temperature is within 10 C of ambient temp, a bit higher under load. Recently applications and games have been crashing, freezing, and rebooting my system and random. After taking off the heatsink and reapplying the silver-based thermal paste, the temps remained the same. I have a thermalright sk6 with the loud as heck delta fan. Soon after this heat sink maintainence my cpu failed to boot into windows. It posted fine but the os would not load. After reformatting and reinstalling everything is working correctly but the high temps and random crashing still remain. Im thinking its a power supply problem, but i currently have an antec 400 W PSU thats about 2 years old. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Why can't you come up with an easy one? At this point I'd: 1. Remove the case cover and blow a house fan directly onto the motherboard 2. Plug in any 300w or better p/s you can find to see if it helps. 3. Clean h/s and cpu and reapply paste again; just in case. I do not believe this will change anything though. You've already done about everything prudent here. I can't help but wonder what caused the temps to go up in the first place. Could it really be the Antec? That boggles the mind.

I know exactly what your problem is. (Well if this isn't the problem then I have no idea what to do). Many people stuff their computers into small enclosed compartments (DON'T SUFFOCATE YOUR COMPUTER) In this small area, especially AMD chips can get really hot. Systems hang, games lag or quit to the desktop, and I've found that Cd's burn really slow under a hot system as well. My problem was that the power supply fan was blowing out hot air and the case fan in the back sucked in that hot air. The fan in the front expelled hot air. This configuration caused my games to lock up if the system was on for more than an hour. After switching the direction of the fans, it was smooth sailing.

i was gettin those temps even with the side panel removed and a house fan blowing. After testing with a new power supply i got the same temps. Put the old supply back in and noticed a connecter (looks like a fan connector) leading from the power supply wasn't connected to anything. Connected that to the mobo, reapplied the arctic silver and things are back to normal. Thanks for the suggestions guys. too bad comp usa has a restoking fee for the power supply i bought, should broke it and said it was defective when i retured it =\