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CPU Cooling (light, easy, cheap)

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I built a computer with the help of this forum more than 7 months ago.

I need some help cooling it now. I just moved, and it's a little warmer in my room now. I'm concerned. PC Wizard 08 tells me, when idling:

Proc temp: 46C
Core 1: 40C
Core 2: 40C
Mainboard temp: 43C

GPU temp: 64C

It's a C2D E4500. The graphics card is an 8800GT.

I'm concerned because when I play Oblivion at what should be tolerable for my setup, I get temperatures on the two cores of over 70C. It's limit is 74, I believe, and I have had some BSOD problems.

I'm not sure if it's the way I applied the coolant or the manufacturer's cooling unit, but I'm pretty sure I need to take it apart to fix it. I've read Tom's reviews on the coolers, but I wanted to know if there was a $50 option that wasn't too heavy and was fairly easy to attach. The manufacturer's unit seems too heavy already.

Any help greatly appreciated.

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too much thermal compound maybe. clean both surfaces as well as you can and reapply a very small amount in the very center of the processor. OR if you are unsure, take a very straight edge, razor blade if you want and spread that small amount around. it should be paper thin coverage.

Other option i would think is that dust plays a major role in temperatures. spray out the heatsink a bit and see if that helps.

Thanks very much. I used a razor blade when I mounted it originally, but maybe I goofed that up. I'm no pro, and this was my first build. I'm going to switch out the heatsink for another. This is silly. I just started up Fallout 1 to test the CPU and it went over 70C again. That's not right (or good).

I may add another fan too as the side fan came shorted on the cooler master.

Thanks again to both of you.
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Another good, cheap easy to use cooler is the Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7, bout $25 bucks at most etailers, will cool your cpu very well.

Sounds more like the pushpins did not get set on your current HS, if you used the stock 775 unit, you gotta push till it hurts on those pins.

Try reseating the HSF and see how it cools prior to ordering a new one.

To conclude this post, I ended up purchasing the Zalman 9700. Fry's was offering it for $40 and I wanted to fix this problem pronto. When I opened the case and took the board out, it was clear the stock heatsink wasn't fixed completely any more. It must have come loose when I moved places. I replaced it anyway so the same thing doesn't happen again.

I have a Gigabyte DS3 mobo which only has 4 fan slots, 2 4-prong, and 2 3-prong. The Zalman, surprisingly is a 3-prong, so I had to fit it on a sys_fan, rather than the cpu_fan. That means I wasn't able to add another case fan, but meh. The cooling is great, although it's loud. I will fix this soon. Thanks to all who helped!
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