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ok so i have an AMD Athlon XP Barton 2500+ and it runs at 123ºF on idle and about 130 after a game. ive been told that this is really hot. how hot should it be? i dont know if im in danger or not. do i need to worry?

That's a fine temperature.

I have a Barton 2500 oc'd to 3200, 400mhz bus, and at idle the temp is 110. Goes up to 120 gaming. Your temps are still good.

hey id really like to know which heat sink vegasgmc is using, because ive heard that the cooler your cpu is the longer its life is.

its life is already long enough. he will upgrade it sooner or later not before it burns out.

yea true, but i just want my cpu to run as good as it can before i upgrade so i dont have a reason to upgrade as fast

They are fine upto about 80C, so I wouldnt worry.

according to my spec sheets, they are happy to 80, max 85, but i dont like seeing anythng over 35!, ok im a water cooler tho!

My temps run in that range too, tried CPU Idle but it made my system keep rebooting. Would like it to be lower but not had much luck.

Well I think anything over 50 deg C is way too hot. 80 deg C sure they chip its self won't melt, but you tell me how many times you system locks up when its in the 60 deg C range. My 2000 is toast b/c of running hot, that damn chip was soooo unstable. I have 2 other machines. 3000 xp and a 2700. My 3000 runs at 38 deg C with cpuidle, doesn't lock up or freeze. At 59 deg C before cpu idle, I would reboot and freeze constantly. My 2700 after cpu is down around 41 deg C another large drop. My #1 complaint about AMD is system reliability. It looks like I've found the trick, super low cpu temps.

Here's my point, the chip won't be damaged at high temps up to 85 deg C, however no one says its going to run stable. In my own experience I have found that anything over 50 deg I get random reboots and crashing. If anyone wants to try this program like I did go to www.cpuidle.de

I have no affiliation with cpuidle, just like how well its worked for me. I feel confident enough now to expand my system into a workstation, where before it was not stable enough.

So what happens when you do CPU-intensive tasks? The CPU won't be idle then, temperatures will rise, will it lock up?

If so, what's the point in having a fast CPU if you can only use it for apps that don't require a lot of CPU power?

A workstation usually means that you do "real" work on your computer, meaning that the CPU is in heavy use.

In my opinion, there are more factors at play than just the CPU. Other components may intermit errors when temperature rises, and temperature variation alone can cause side-effects due to thermal expansion etc.

I'm not sure if I should say this, but right now when I'm typing this, GPU (graphics card) temperature is 70C, CPU0 is 64C and CPU1 is 59C. All stable, I was playing 3D games while the machine is encoding AVI clips to MPEG-2 (it's been doing that for about three days now).

But my CPUs aren't AMD - however, I don't think the brand matters. What matters is good quality components all around.

The clock is going all the time, even when you r underload it will stop and wait for new instructions. All I can tell you is that this machine has been running solid on for 3 days. Its a new machine, before that I would have to reboot constantly. So for my own experience, this is working great. The computer I am on now, its not a workstation I just build it for my sister. My computer is what I said I will be turning into a workstation. And yes meaning workstation, that includes coding, SQL and many other things. However I haven't completely decided what I am going to do. I am getting a few 450 PIII dual system so I'm gonna toy around with many options. I may still build a dual MP server.