Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

Alright... so I've been using my Athlon 64 X2 for a week and a bit now, and I'm mighty impressed with its performance in Windows, doing random things. I decided today to give it a bit of a load and I started up Gears of War PC. Ran all settings at high (except DX10 and Anti-aliasing) at 1152x720, just to start. Now, when I'm just hangin' around in Windows, or letting the computer idle, the CPU runs at 36 degrees celsius. When I started playing Gears, the CPU rose up to 57 Celsius and steadied there. I've read a bit from Googling and I see a lot of crap info (people who seem to be pulling info out their asses) on how hot my CPU should be running. What I want to know is, how hot SHOULD it be running, and what should I do to lower the temp it's running at?

EDIT: One website (The Heatsink Guide) states that the maximum temperature for an Athlon 64 X2 is 65 degrees. Of course, I'm not exactly sure how long it would last at that temp. What's a good temp under load?

Your load temp is fine as long as it's not going over 70c. The chip's at stock voltage so it won't burn up.

If you want to make it run cooler you can undervolt the CPU until it crashes prime95 stress test or get a better heatsink.

Your temps are about the same as my temps. I hit 39C idle and 57C under load. Seeing as both of us are using AMD Athlon 64 K8 CPUs, I'd say you're right at home at those temps (of course, I have a 130nm CPU and you have a 65nm, I presume).

Yep, it's a 65nm. Thanks for the info! I was a little nervous 'cause SpeedFan has all its temp warnings set to 50C by default, which I didn't realize. When it hits the warning temp, a little flame icon appears next to the component. Made me nervous :/

Need a good AM3/AM2+/AM2, 1 pcie 2.0 is acceptable.

You need a what now???

I'm guessing mech is looking to buy a motherboard, since I don't know a lot of other computer components that have a PCIe slot and an AMD processor socket.

I'm talking about a motherboard.

AM3 only or combo AM2+/AM3? AM3 dedicated grands you DDR3 access, while the other one gives you more CPU options.

AM2/AM2+/AM3 (all of these have DDR3 support, which is the only reason I list them and not the more well-known ones)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131391
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153149

AM3:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130223
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128392

Yo peeps, I needs me a new 'putalator, since mines old and stuffz. I don't want to spend more than $500, it needs to be Dual(or greater) cored, 2.5ghz+, 4gigs Ram, and be able to support this nifty 4879 I gots me right here for $50.

Also, I don't need any HDD or DVD/CD drives. I do need a basic (lol popcan) case to hold it all in.


pm me with builds k thx <3