I am new to this CPU, tho not to PC's. I got a new PCChips 830MR MB and this CPU, already mounted. I have read that these chips run really hot. When I powered it up, it acted strangely and I smelled something really hot. Powered down, rechecked all connections, tried again. Same thing. There is one jumper on the board, to reset the CMOS. I put it to the normal connection. I am going to try tomorrow putting it back to the clear position. There is nothing burned on the board nor the CPU. No lifted etch, nothing. So. My question is: do these things normally run hot enough to stink when they are new? I don't want to fry it. I have 5 case fans plus the PS fan and the CPU fan on the heatsink. I would think this should keep it cool enough. Some of you XP gurus out there should be able to tell me. But please do not tell me to take it to a 'professional'. This is my toy, my hobby, my baby. I do it myself, as I have for the past 20+ years. Thanks for any help!

Hello Make sure that a thin film of white silicon is applied both on the bottom of heat sink and CPU crystal(here you need first to clean it with care, then put white silicon with a small piece of wood. You suppose to do all these operations after you make sure you're static discharged). You also should install a "cooler" software ( as CPUIdle5,WaterFall, Rain 2.0 etc.)which will give a HALT ON command to CPu clock generator while CPU is in IDLE state. Because it's IDLE most of the time, the core temperature will be tracked down. I'm having an Athlon 1600+ /VIA 266A chipset and I'm using a wonderful program called VCool18b8. Anyway there is no reason for CPU to smell hot if the heat sink is properly mounted with an effective fan on top and room enough in the tower. Please keep me informed.

If it is the first time you ever started the motherboard after installing it you will get a hot or weird smell from due to it being new. I just put in a pc chips m920 board and had the same thing. It stop stinking after a little whlke but you might want to keep an eye on it to be safe. I did and mine works fine.

You will notice a different odor when installing the new motherboard/cpu especially with all the fans you have running. Check to ensure that the processor fan is correctly installed. They can be put on the wrong way and it will cause the cpu to overheat. Look for a lip on the heatsink. Did you remove the plastic tab that is normally over the heatsink compound? Mesich

Thanks, guys. This was just the stuff I was looking for. Stefan: I appreciate the suggestions for those programs. I will be looking for them in a bit. No, I did not use the silicon compound, as I don't have any. This was, apparently, and OEM chip, and as I said it was already installed when I got it. There was no grease on the CPU. The total time it has been on, so far, is probably less than one minute. mesich. As noted above, there was no silicon compound, nor was there a plastic tab or any other sign of the grease. I will recheck the alignment of the heatsink tomorrow. One thing that I have become aware of is that the surge protector I have been using for years may not have enough oomph for this system. The power supply is 400 watts, and it draws several amps of AC. My surge protector is rated at only two amps for the fully filtered outlets. It may be starving for current, so I will bypass it next time. The notes above about the 'new' smell is encouraging. It seems a bit strong, but I will grit my teeth and see if I can get it up and running. I never saw any smoke or other sign of actual overheating, but the smell was strong and I didn't want to burn it up. I even bought a new and bigger power supply, thinking it had burned out! I plan on running quite a few devices, and want to make sure there is enough power. Anyway, thanks for the good input! I will respond back tomorrow, after I give it another try. I don't have any compound, nor is there any place in this town to buy it. I might be able to find some in one of my other power supplies, on a power transistor or something. It doesn't take very much, as grease is also a very good insulator. I'll let you goys know here.

Well, I worked on it Sunday most of the day. The stink gradually faded. What I found out, I think, is that I have bad or wrong type memory. I suspect it's just the wrong type. I never knew there could be so many PC133 types of memory. I went to the Crucial site and noted what they recommend; 32MX64. What bI have is 32MX4, obviously a different breed. I tried going to the PCChips site for their recommendation, but it was the same as the users manual. SO. I went on eBay and found, I hope, an auction for a Kingston stick and waited till the last 8 seconds and got it, at a price of $29 versus $43 from Kingston. And free shipping, too. If this doesn't work then I'll get the expensive stuff from Crucial, I guess. When I tried to bring the board up, it went through a cyucle of blinking the monitor lites, first slowly then rapidly, then nothing and finally repeat. There was never anything on the screen. When I have seen this sort of thing before it was either bad memory or memory not seated well. So I am hoping. I don't believe there is anything wrong with my CPU or MB. The heatsink only gets a bit warm at the base. I found some silicon film used on an older CPU (AMD, too.) and used that since I couldn't find any of the compound. The power supply power transistors and diodes also use this stuff. Wish me luck!