On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:46:14 +0000, Wes Newell wrote:

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:03:09 -0500, No Spam wrote:

Just bought a new combo at Fry's. I know that I shouldn't have, but it
was too cheap to pass up. And I got a working motherboard on just the
2nd try!

Anyway...ECS RS-482-M motherboard with an A64-3500 processor. The BIOS
is indicating about 59deg Celcius at boot, which seems high. I have
another A64-3000 system that idles at about 45 deg C.

Sounds high. Maybe it's a bios problem. Try upgrading it. My 3000+ idled
at around 36C without CnQ IIRC.

It was a boxed fan, and I'm using the stock fan. I got the same temps
with artic silver and with the original gunk on the stock heatsink.

Just proving what's been sadi many times.:-)

Cool n Quiet is enabled in BIOS. Do I still need to load the AMD driver
in Windows?

yes, you need the driver for it to work.

I agree with Wes, update your BIOS to the latest rev. Something is very
wrong, hopefully it's just the BIOS misinterpreting the diode reading. The
highest temperature that I've seen on my X2 4400+ is 40C and that's with
both cores running at 100%. When it idles it's around 30C. 59C is 20
degrees to hot. You might want to try cleaning off the heat sink and
reapplying the thermal compound. When you put the heat sink on the first
time did you use the thermal tape that came with it or did you use
something else? You can't overdo it with thermal tape so if you used that
then your problem is not to much thermal compound. When you put on the
Arctic Silver I assume you cleaned off the old compound with a solvent, if
you didn't that would be a problem. When you apply thermal compound you
only want to use a little bit.

One more thing that you might want to try is to measure the temperature of
the heatsink to see if your CPU temperature readings are real. You have
two A64 systems, one that seems normal and this one, so you can compare
the heat sink temperature readings. 59C is so far off that you should be
able to notice the difference between the good system and this system with
your finger.