Windows 7 Why did my CPU temperature suddenly rise? Win 7 related?

[dbz123]

Ok, I'm not so sure if this is a Windows 7 related issue, but thought I'd post to see what people think anyway. Couldn't find any good answers out there anyway.

My CPU now sits around 50-53 degrees Celcius on startup. Heck I caught it at 70C so I dusted it like mad. Last time I checked which was a month ago, it was around the early 40's. So after I dusted my tower to perfection, it still remains around 50. I don't have a third party heatsink and just using the one that came with the CPU when i first bought it. My rig is about 2 years old and has been working fine. I use speedfan to monitor my temps and the other readings seem to be fine. I'm afraid it will go high and crash if i play games or something.

I noticed this change when I install windows 7 a few weeks ago from XP. Could that be hogging CPU resources or something? Or maybe its unrelated at all... I'm pretty sure my case is pretty good for cooling. Wiring is decent and fans are set to high. Anyone know what I can do to bring it down a notch to the way it was? (maybe besides getting a thermal heatsink or something).

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core 2.2GHZ
ASUS M3A motherboard
4 Gigs or RAM
Radeon HD 3870 (512MB)
Windows 7 - 64bit
Antec 900 Gamer case

 

[Joe S]

Well to start with Vista and Windows 7 both use more resources than XP. Is this temp from sleep/hibernate or a cold boot when the machine has been powered off for several hours?
Joe

 

[Mad Wolf]

it may be that windows 7 is using a bit more cpu that xp did. However the change in temp should not be that Drastic (i would expect a few degrees) amd cpu's have a habit of running rather "hot" compared to the equivalent intel. but the change you have from 40 to 70 is slightly concerning it could be as you have said the thermal paste or cpu cooler.

I highly doubt windows 7 is a major cause in your problem on a system as powerful as yours as it runs on smaller dual cores just as well so i would not expect to see it using allot of resources. did you ever take the temp on xp whilst gaming that would show if 70c is normal so to say on your pc

Apart from that i have very little other advice to give except most motherboards will cut your pc out if it gets to hot so you could possibly try and see if it will run a game say in windowed mode and see what speedfan's temp says

 

[dbz123]

Well to start with Vista and Windows 7 both use more resources than XP. Is this temp from sleep/hibernate or a cold boot when the machine has been powered off for several hours?
Joe

Yeah, this is a cold boot.

 

[dbz123]

When I was running XP about a month ago, I had speedfan installed as well. I would load it up every now and then to make sure temps were stable and they were. CPU if I can remember was averaging around 40-44 degrees C. And then after installing a fresh win 7, I then installed speedfan a week later and saw the CPU temp rise to about 65 and up or something. I immediately opened the case and dusted it like crazy. From there, I managed to bring it down to the early 50's.

Is there another good temp monitor than speedfan? I know its the winter season where I live so my room temperature is pretty warm. I tried turning it down, but I'm getting little results.