Roph, you're familiar with my setup and you're the person I think would know what's goin' on here- but if anyone else knows what's going on here, please, do help me out.
This computer set up is less than a year old. It's a very solid set up that Paul helped me out with and designed himself. Other than what came with the processor and case, I have not installed any sort of additional fans or heatsink- but I've just ordered another case fan that should be arriving any day now, as that's presently all I can afford.
My computer is HOT. It idles at about 39-42 C on a good day, and if I try to play Minecraft I'm pushing 60. My processor's max operating temperature is 70! This is scary, because if my processor fries I'm shit out of luck for a while. Watching a youtube video alone can pitch things up to 52 C.
Another thing: I use my computer as a radio when I sleep. When I first set it up there were no issues, but I'm noticing now that it gets hot when it's on standby. Tonight, with everything but winamp and speedfan closed (I even task-killed explorer.exe to see what would happen) I let it go to stand by. Thirty minutes later, the temperature had jumped up twelve degrees to 52. When I woke it back up, it IMMEDIATELY started dropping back down to 40.
I have no idea what's going on right now, but I shouldn't be having heat concerns over running simple programs like microsoft paint and firefox. I'm afraid to use my gaming computer to play actual games right now, and this is saddening. I'm hoping the fan can make a small difference in the short term, and I'll try and learn about heatsinks for when I've got more than two pennies to rub together.
For reference, this is my setup. If anyone needs any other information, I can do my best to provide it.
I agree with Holk, blow it clean, add new Thermal paste, and get a better and bigger processor-fan when you can afford it. A decent fan will do a lot to bring down the temperatures.. Also, check your heatsink.. if there is dust between the heatsink and the fan, it may clump it all up and prevent air from flowing through (or even prevent the fan from spinning properly), and then it will have a big impact on the temps. If your processor is at 35C in idle, you got nothing to worry about.. that's pretty normal. I recently cleaned my own computer and It's around 30C in idle.
Even the other temperatures are not dangerous for your componenets, if your processor reaches 50C from 1 program though, that seems kinda weird. Maybe you need to set your fans to work at higher speeds, and just clean the heatsink + adding thermal paste, That usually helps. Also, there might be some problem with the PSU but I doubt it.
What temperatures are your graphic card reaching? And your other components, do they also suffer from being hot? I wouldn't say that you have dangerous values though, so playing games shouldn't be a problem..
Make sure that you have the BIOS set to shut off your computer if your components reaches a specific value aswel, that is if they happen to boost up alot when you are not noticing. That would prevent anything from over-heating.
Also, get rid of speedfan.. It's pretty much useless, and doesn't even read correct values from time to time. Get an utility from your manufacturers website, or get CPU-Z + HWmonitor or something. They can be found here:
Cpu-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.htmlHWMonitor: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.htmlYou can also download CoreTemp from the same site.. it will let you see your processors Tj.Max Temps. So you know when you are in dangerous values.
Edit: Forgot to say that newer CPUs usually runs fine at around 50-60 degrees, but you don't want to be in values that is higher than that.. Tj.max temps are usually around 80-90 degrees, for newer CPUs but you definetely don't want to be around the 70-80C mark.