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Tommer · 2012-08-12, 08:49

Hiya guys.

I've been looking for ways to regain some of the old performance on this machine. At the moment i'm noticing the CPU appears to run quite slowly even for it's model.

The CPU is a P4 3.2 Ghz Presscott 2M and seems to be running constantly at 67C with the usual applications open EG Firefox with 10 tabs and a few explorer windows open, avast, rainmeter and no other "Bloatware" since i'm very careful about what background processes are allowed to run on the system.

After reading from the Intel site I found that the maximum operating temperature of my CPU is 70C .. Hm.

I observed doing some CPU intensive task like creating/loading a minecraft map in single player is causing the machine to lock up, the fans rise and the cpu pretty much stops doing anything to stop from getting any hotter so I assume it's aware that it's getting near critical temperature.

I've had the system since 2006 and I've done a reasonably good job of keeping dust out of it and making sure nothing is blocking the airways - But i'm wondering if there's a way to help cool it down? I'm reading that other people's P4 3.2 ghz would operate at around 50C normally and I get the feeling mine should be operating like this too.

One of the things I was considering was checking the thermal paste on the cpu but I don't see why this would be a problem considering i've never touched this area of the computer before?

The heatsink onboard my PC is a dell specific one and thus I doubt I will be able to change this. :/