Cooling down my CPU

I'm getting kind of worried about my CPU temp which seems to be stable at 60 degrees with all the stock chasis fans and stock CPU heatsink stuff. My PC hasn't been moved or had any impact to it since I got it in September so I'm really wondering why the CPU would be at such a high temp, or are most Athlon 3400+ with all the stock cooling that it came with from the factory prone to that temp?

I have my Gainward Geforce 6800GT clocked at Ultra speeds using the stock cooling and that temperature is around 53 idle and 57-61 on load which isn't bad in my opinion.

Could there be a major problem causing my CPU's relativly high temperature?

I havn't dusted my PC since I got it, yet on the back of the chasis those ventilation holes aren't really dusty at all..Could the cause of the heat be dust 9 or so months' worth of dust messing around and would taking a can of compressed air to it maybe sort out the problem?

I only checked the temp. a few days ago so I have no idea how long it's been at 60 for, it might have been like that since September or it might only have started in the last 2 months when I got that weird CPU Fan Fail (even though the fan is working fine at close to 5000rpm) error.

In bios under hardware monitor the CPU temp was set to N/A and when I set it to ignore I obviously got rid of the alarm because I really think it's inaccurate, some people have suggested that if all the fans are working fine and I'm not getting any problems it could be a faulty thermal diode which is giving me an inaccurate temperature or a software fault which gave me the CPU Fan Fail error (I also only got this error after removing some pesky trojan/spyware which I think might also be related to some kind of motherbord software fault *shrug*)

Could the high temperature reading be inaccurate, and if not, would dusting the internals maybe sort out the problem? I really don't have the cash right now to invest in any extra cooling so if I can get the temperature down with what I have now, that would be great.



All other parts of my PC are cool though, my motherboard is only 32 degrees and my GPU has dropped to 49 idle so I'm really wondering why my CPU is being so mean!

Check your heatsink for dust buildup.

What core Athlon are you running?
Newcastles/Clawhammers run hotter than Winchesters/Venices/San Diegos.

Ummm, 3400+ 64 bit, I think it's a Clawhammer...

Can I remove dusk from the heatsink without removing the CPU from the Mobo or disassembling anything?

Sure, you can use a can of compressed air, but if the box is really dirty, just rip the thing apart piece by piece and clean everything.

That's what I don't want to do... I want to touch the least amount of electronics and disemble the least amount of stuff as possible!

A can of compressed air will do fine assuming you wedge the heatsink's fan so it doesn't spin out of control.

A cat makes a very efficient ( as well as amusing) wedge, but a pencil will work in a pinch.

Well, I took half a can of compressed air to my PC, as well as plucking off pieces of dust off each fan's fin. Result?

CPU temp dropped 12 degrees to 48 but slowly seems to be crawling up but seems stable at 52.

GPU dropped 10 degrees to 44 idle :)

Thanks for the help everyone

Thank the cat.