In the bios it says my cpu fan is running at 850rpm. When in windows it sometimes stopps all together. Should I be conserned. 850 seems low to me.

Athlon64 X2 4200+
ECS NFORCE4M-A V.3 mobo

It's a smart fan and adjusts its RPM according to the temperature.

Run some CPU-intensive task and see if the fan spins up to full speed.

Hi, thanks for ur replys. The speed in bios is the fastest Ive seen it go (gets upto about the same speed in games, I know this because the AMD sticker is slightly off centre so its easier to see visually). It also stops whilst playing games. The core temp is arround 40oC when idelling on the desktop. Infact its 40 right now, and the fan isnt moving. My computer actually does have a retsart problem, but thats another thread and I dont want to get told off again for merging threads. So, In light of this information, is it still normal?

40C is a pretty normal CPU temperature. How high does it go in games or when your restarting issue occurs?

Smart fans RPM downward and are controlled by temperature.

I think about 60ish. And thats not a problematic temp from what I gather.

you could download speedfan(http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) and see if you can control your fans manually, if you don't trust the fan speeds.

dang cheap mobo's

So, you picked up the combo deal from frys, eh? Yeah, me too, and I'm stuck with the same exact problem as you are!! Restarts randomly, haven't figured out from what yet, and fan runs at 850 rps or so. My CPU temp is actually usually high, about 57 C and that's when in bios. I've been trying to get this to work out for a couple days now, very frustrating. I am using a linux dist called mint, it's pretty neat. I'm new to the linux os tho. I can also run win me (what was on the hard drive - waiting for my free copy of vista from cc...) instead of mint. Anyway, I just found out a little bit ago that the bios for the mobo can be updated with
Update Description
-Patch the cpu temperature issue caused by ITE8716
-Patch the cpu temperature issue
-Change the Model Name 'NFORCE500M-A' to 'NFORCE5M-A'

is this the one you tried, unsuccessfully? how are you doing on the restarting problem? any help would be appreciated!!!

Im afraid my problem is slightly different to yours. I bought everything from e-buyer then built it myself. except the mobo which didnt work so I got a replacement for that at pc world. also I had variouse other components which I reused from my old computer, hard drives the case and the network card. Turns out that was my problem right there. The network card, it must have been shorting out, It seemd odd because I notised it only happend when I was online, but it stopped happening when my isp went down. So I didnt think that could possibly be a hardware issue. It may have been the software actually. Either way. I fixd it by changing the network card.

Oh yeah, also, my fan does seem to be regulating the temprature, keeping it at 40oC. Seems a bit high to me but there hasnt been any problems related to it. touch wood.

40c isn't dangerous while idling but its not something I'd be comfortable with, depending on your ambient temperatures. I'm pretty sure you can turn off SMART fan control in the BIOS and just leave it at max RPMs all the time.

I imagine the HS/F would collect less dust, though, with less air circulating.