Athlon 1.2 cooling

last week i got a motherboard/cpu/heatsink combo and it arrived already put together. I put it in an enligh mid-tower with front and rear fans and have been running it for the last few days. my concern is that according to asus probe, the chip runs at 50 degrees celsius. I thought this was a bit high, so i cracked the case open again and looked at the heatsink placement. I noticed that the heatsink was not really properly put on. the heatsink, instead of covering all of the chip, covers only about 5/6-ths of it and then extends onto the socket. so, instead of the socket extending out from underneath the heatsink, it's a part of the chip that does. just wondering of how much this contributes to the fairly high chip temperature of 50 degrees. the heatsink is a coolermaster amd approved one.

it's a coolermaster DP5-6H51. the reason i didn't put it in the post is because i didn't exactly remember the number and since coolermaster's models differ by like 1 letter/number i didn't want to put the wrong one. but thanks for the info.

Ok first thing... 50 C isn't really super hot. However, I'd still upgrade the HSF to something like a volcano II if you're not overclocking or a higher end HSF if you are overclocking. As for the placement affecting performance, it might be a little bit, but as long as the core is making complete contact with the HSF which is sounds like it is, I would guess it is performing about as good as it is going to.

That oughta void your warrenty!