CPU temperature is too high

Question

I have a problem with one of my old PC's. It's an Intel Celeron @2.4GHz on socket 478. When i enter the BIOS and go to Hardware Monitor, the temperature raises gradually to 65°C and sits like that,meanwhile the CPU fan is not at full speed (with the case opened). If i boot in Windows XP, it runs fine (no BSOD or errors).

I tried to boot cold straight to the BIOS, but it still raises from about 50°C to 65°C.

What can be wrong ?

   PC specs:

Intel Celeron @2.4GHz

PCchips M950 motherboard

640 MB RAM

Ati RADEON 9250

   Other stuff:

40 GB Seagate Barracuda (with Windows XP)

SONY DVD-RW drive

Floppy drive

I'm sorry if i mispelled some words

UPDATE: I tested the motherboard alone on my desk and it does the same. I monitorized the temperature : It sits mostly at 65, but sometimes has a hickup and jumps on 69 for a second. Multiple "hickups" occurred during testing

Here are some pictures (links):

The motherboard

Hardware Monitor

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 31 '15 at 14:27

Realistically, although 65 degrees is hot, it isn't an indication of something going wrong.

The best thing you can do is check the CPU fan to ensure that it's functioning, that there isn't an excessive amount of dust on it and that it's seated in the socket properly.

If you want to go one step further, you can remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal paste.

If you Still want a lower temperature, you can purchase an aftermarket CPU cooler that will perform better then the stock one that you have.

There is risk associated with the last two options if you do not know what you are doing.

Edit: I just saw the comment that it was shutting down while you are playing video games - that is an indication of something wrong. The above advice applies regardless.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 31 '15 at 14:37

You should really monitor the temperature in Windows when it's doing something that matters, using something like CoreTemp (watch out for bundled crapware) or SpeedFan. The latter also allows you to control fan speeds on some machines.

65'c on it's own is not "wrong". It could well be designed to constantly run at 65'c. The Lenovo Yoga for example, does exactly that. NVidia graphics chips are also typically run at 65-85'c target temperatures and some AMD cards have normal operating temperatures of 95'c. If it only shut down suddenly once then I would hardly consider it a concern.

I partially agree with Arthur's suggestion, if it were a more modern PC then fitting an aftermarket CPU cooler would be sensible. However with a machine that old, an aftermarket CPU cooler will probably cost as much as a new machine twice as fast.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '15 at 05:29

I have solved the problem.If you look in the motherboard picture you may see that one latch is opened, creating a huge crack between the heatsink and the cpu, and I didn't noticed because it looked like closed. After the fix, the CPU temperature sits nicely at 40°C. Thank you everyone for sugestions and answers.They all helped me :)

CPU temperature is too high

3 Answers3