CPU temp versus room temp

Sometimes the room temp is 80-85f with the a/c on cause I live in the desert. My cpu temp is idling at about 57c and 62c under load. When the room was about 70f the cpu temp was about 7 degrees lower. I want to cut out a hole in the side of my case and install another fan to exhaust the hot air or maybe blow more room air in to get it cooler inside the case. I think the 6800xt video gpu is getting hot but I don't know how to monitor it's temp. I haven't tried thermal paste like arctic silver yet. I could cut out a hole in the top of the case too and add a fan. Any thoughts on the optimum way to lower the temps?

 

you could start with the refreshing of your thermal paste cleaning everything as u do it (heatsink, etc). This is certainly a good start. I have a front inlet at the case front (120mm) with 2 x 120mm exhaust and this seems to maintain temps well (42C at the moment).

 

Everest
http://www.majorgeeks.com/EVEREST_Free_Edition_d4181.html

is a great freeware program for collecting system info
It will show your Graphics Card Temperature

After installing it
Run the program and then select:
Computer
and then
Sensor

 

You have a good idea there, but dust is always the real enemy. Check your key areas, like the heatsink/fan, and make sure they are clean. A slight restriction of airflow there can really heat things up.

When I bumped my CPU speed up from 1900Mhz to 2500Mhz my CPU went from around 52C to 62C. That is another big factor. If you are trying to streach out the life of your CPU (and can't afford to replace it) you can do the exact opposite of overclocking, which shortens all the affected components life, and under clock it. Personally I like getting the full specs without overclocking.

There are ALWAYS better heatsink/fans out there, you get what you pay for. A couple of years I had to invest in a new heatsink because I was getting 57C, the new copper heatsink dropped the temperature around 5 degrees.

 

Thanks to all for the input. I checked Nvidia's website and they have a software program called Nvidia N Tune which when installed will show you the gpu temp. It's a 33.7 mb file. I'll download it and try it. Has anyone ever used this arctic silver thermal paste with decent results? The thermal paste I'm using I got at Radio Shack.