Overheating Issue Intel Duo E8500
 

Hello everyone, New here, needing some serious help.

Firstly, I have a stock built computer(built by Dell), I do not intend to overclock or anything of the sort. I just want to get my computer back to working order, without having to deal with Dell's very very long lists of "try this, it might help". I have a Dell XPS 630i(motherboard) with Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16 GHz, 1333FSB) processor, an nVidia GeForce GTX 280 with 1024 MB, 4 GB of RAM, and I still have limited warranty.

My computer was turned on at 12/11/2008, and has had two issues; My DVD Rom went bad and was replaced by Dell, and once I had a interrupt while booting in safe-mode (power outage), which caused my hard drive to no longer boot Windows. These both were resolved by Dell. I had a issue about 1 or 2 weeks ago where I was getting random freezes. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was happening. Until I watched my CPU temperatures. I had serious heat issues, and asked around and was told by a friend to reapply new thermal gel (TIM). I went out and bought Arctic Silver 5, and generously applied a lot of thermal gel(since I had no idea what I was doing :( ). To my dismay it was still running really hot(170 F), so I did it again, using the exact amount specified by Arctic Silver, and I'm still having the exact same issue(175 F max). A few things that might help you determine a fix are, when my CPU gets higher, the temperature completely plummets to a very desirable level. (150 F), the lower it drops the hotter it gets, my secondary CPU seems to be just find at (145 F), even though when I applied a very generous amount it was running lower at idle (138 F). I would greatly, and I mean greatly appreciate any and all insight into my issue. :ws:

Do you know if your case and CPU fans are temperature controled? It might be age and wear are slowing the "ramp up" of fan speed.
It is also possible the power supply is out of spec "below" a certain draw.
The trouble shooting trees exist because they work. no magic involved.
Any recent changes to voltage settings?
The WAG (wild *** guess) factor is large.
Easiest is pick a top rated aftermarket cooler you like and try it. If you can in your Dell case..
Speed Fan, and or CPU-Z might help information wise..

I think I no longer have an issue. I downloaded Speed Fan, and another suggested monitoring program(Core Temp), and both state my first CPU under a full load reached a maximum temperature of 52 C (125.6 F). I'm guessing my nVidia System Monitor isn't working properly anymore. If these two programs are really reliable, then I'd love to know because that would mean my issue was never an issue in the first place. Thanks for all your info and help wtourist, and to answer your questions, my fans never seem to speed up dramatically, and my CPU heat-sink's fan does not seem to increase with a temperature change. Also I don't remember the exact values of my voltages, but they seem to be right where they should be. If I have a future heat issue, I may seriously consider an aftermarket cooler. Thank you for your insight, and I still look forward to knowing how reliable Core Temp & Speed Fan are.