High Idle Temperature (2500+)

55 is still ok, but not as an idle temp. My experience is the Athlon XP's gain about 10C from idle to full load, and 65 is too hot... Hopefully yours is at all all the time.

If its a couple years old it may need a cleaning...

Open the case, clean out the dust bunnies if there are any, blow all the dust off the fans, components, heatsinks, etc. and see what that does to the temp.

If its still high (my XP2600+ idles at around 40), it may need the thermal pad/compound cleaned off & replaced.

Mike.

I used to own 2 2500+ Barton core cpus.however my first one did run hot.right around where you find yours.My only recourse was to buy an aftermarket cooler,something with a pure copper heatsink.so I bought a Volcano12 extreme and it dropped my temp by almost 10 degrees.For some reason the early 2500s ran hot.But they are still very overclockable.was eventually able to get 2.3 gigs stable.(requires a voltage adjustment).anyways,go with a good aftermarket cooler and you should be fine.

My AMD may not be the same..

1ghz AMD Thunderbird - no OC
vcore@1.86

When I used the stock HSF I was getting 55+C idle, with the side off.
I did run folding@home on it, it got above 63+C.

I recently brought another (had one installed on my dads XP2400+) Areo Cooler X-Raider for it for 20 bucks, brought temps down.

Idle 44-45C
folding@home 56-57C (with Side case on)
folding@home 53-54C (side case off)

I guess 60C is just fine, just dunno when that fan will give out since it is right there at the source of the heat. I just feel as though, its more of a gamble. (if you run it 24 hours) And that my AMD stock HSF is actually older then my P4 system.. 8O

When I saw the temps go above 60C (on my tbird), even though the stock HSF was clean, RPM were good, and I felt heat just disbursting like crazy off it, I thought it was worth spending 20 bucks, and having CPU loads of 53-58C depending on my room temp, and with the side case back on.

I suppose what really motivated me, was folding on linux..