[shadowmaniac]

I recently built a new PC about 2-3 weeks ago. At first, all was fine and dandy until recently (after last friday's maintenance), it started sounding like a jet engine whenever I play World of Warcraft.

I tried running Doom 3 (was still in the early stages but don't think that this matters) and the noise wasn't as bad but then I played WoW again and the noise was at the same level as when playing Doom3. I've only tried this once though.

My temperature at idle is around 51C (used to be < 50C when I first built it) with 2k-3k RPM and spiked up to 68-75C with 4.5K+ RPM when I play WoW.
I did read that anything below 80C is fairly safe for a P4 but it's mainly the noise that's bugging me. Any help would be much appreciated.

Also, I opened the casing once when the noise started (after shutting off the PC) and it was quite warm inside the casing; my graphics card was probably the warmest one of all.

Below is my PC config (what I remember off my head at least ^^) :
Asus P5GD1
P4 3.0GHz with HT and 2mb L2 Cache
2x512mb DDR400 Kingston RAM
128mb ATI x300SE
120GB SATA HDD
120GB IDE HDD
DVD-RW and CD-RW
500W PSU

PS - I was running WoW at default setting and I do believe that I should be able to run it at "high" settings with my current config. Doom3 was also run at default settings. I also have a casing fan.

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does it beep? mine was doing this but all i had to do was clean the little fan on my graphics card.

[3leggedDAWG]

does it beep? mine was doing this but all i had to do was clean the little fan on my graphics card.

[warriorscot]

You have an x300 that is one of the slowest card you can buy for PCI-e its not going to be playing anything recent on high, lol.
You do have a temperature problem on your cpu and maybe your gfx card, get rivatuner and use its monitoring function to find out what your temps are like. You are lucky your pc isnt crashing in the game its running on the limit only a liittle more and the thermal protection features would shut down the cpu. You should get some more thermal paste if you dont have any(arctic silver 5) and remove the hsf clean it up with either proper hsf cleaner or alcohol and a cotton bud. Then reseat the hsf making sure it is fully on and clipped in on both sides. If that doesnt work you are going to have to get a better HSF for the cpu, a gfx heat problem would be remedied by more case fans or fiting something like an arctic silencer.

[shadowmaniac]

Thanks for the prompt reply. Much appreciated.

Ok, I cleaned the fans and on idle, it dropped to 46-50C as opposed to 50+ but the problem's still there when I try to run any programs that's kind of demanding and it's VERY slow when I run Azureus AND Mozilla (runs much faster on a P3 1GHz with only 256mb of RAM) though the noise has decreased.
The GFX was the cheapest one I could afford. Wished I found out about this site when I was making my purchase list.
As for Rivatuner, I haven't seen any options for monitoring the temperatures. Could you please guide me.

Another thing I noticed is: there is some kind of "paste" on top of my CPU (wasn't there when I first installed it). Is that normal? The paste is on the bottom of the hsf too. Did I somehow burnt my CPU (or in the process of burning it)?? Is it also safe to keep using it? I tend to leave my PC on 24/7.

All in all, I guess I should be looking for a new CPU, HSF, GFX and possibly casing with extra fans? Could you please suggest anything that'd work on my P5GD1 and that's quite affordable?