On 07/08/10 00:37, Steve Fosdick wrote:
In the second case you need to establish what the maximum permissible temperature is and whether it is being approached. If so better cooling design is required, whether specifically from the CPU fan/cooler or the case design.
As others have said, it might be allowable for the CPU to hit the high 50's, if flash is bringing the machine to it's knees or if either the thermal interface (heatsync material) is damaged or just in poor condition. Or the heatsink itself is full of dust.
I'd be lifting the lid, removing and inspecting the heatsink for dust buildup, inspect the fan (does sensors report the fan speed on this machine) and remove the old heatsink material and replace it with artic silver or some other reasonable quality liquid heatsink compound (remembering with heatsink compound that less is more). Batch built machines tend to use the tape style thermal interface rather than proper heatsink compound and this deteriorates with age sometimes...as does cheap liquid compound..if it has gone dry and crusty then it is worse than useless.
Once you have done that run cpuburn or similar and watch the temperatures like a hawk..if it continues past the high 50's and approaches the maximum thermal design of the CPU then cut the tests and look at the cooling to the rest of the tower.
If the machine is levelling out at the high 50's under 100% cpu load then I would suggest that this is normal and that the fan hasn't been noticed because the machine hasn't been stressed in that way.
Then you need to look at flash or whatever is creating that load, check you are on recent plugin and browser versions etc.