My Dell is Screaming

My son plays an online game called Second Life. It uses about 335,000k. When he plays, the fan is constantly on, and the CPU gets pretty warm to the touch. I've adjusted some of the game settings, which toned it down a little. Is this potentially damaging my system? Assuming I allow him to continue playing (the jury is still out), do I need to look at some cooling options? Or maybe get more RAM?

Dell 4700 - XP Pro sp2
Pentium4 2.80 GHz
512 MB of RAM

Thanks

 

No, you dont need more RAM... As for "warm to the touch" then your probably fine... My computer gets up to 55C-60C when im playing games...
which is so hot, that it burns your fingers when you touch it
So i put a new fan in and now its in the 40'sC

You can download this program :http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

and once installed click "Computer" and then click "sensor"

Then tell us the CPU temp, the GPU temp and the motherboard temp. (just be sure to put and F or a C after so we know which degree it is)

 

Either you have good cooling or my computer is extremely hot cause my computer always has the fan on. (neither mbm5 or everest reads my cpu temp)

 

I agree with Sleepygamer and theven 4, on the temp ranges and my fans are always on as well.

 

Dont stop him playing ,as the guys have said its normal for a fan to increase its speed when in use the computer is just doing what its meant to do,your computer is designed to run constantly at a high workload,this wont significantly effect the lifespan of the components at all,if hes starts talking about overclocking though then you ban him

 

Agreed. If he starts wanting to overclock it, cut him off.... When you overclock, you have to invest in better cooling, which can get pretty expensive!

 

Anyone know why my dell dimension 4600 wont show mu cpu temps it just shows the gpu core and gpu ambient temperature and the hard drive temp. No cpu temps in everest and mbm 5 says nothing!!! It's a Dell Dimension 4600 intel 3.06 ghz 512 ram pc 2700 Nvidia GeForce 5900 se.

 

Your CPU might not have a diode on it and your motherboard might not show socket temps. OR your fan isnt connected DIRECTLY to the motherboard securely.

 

Ok - I downloaded Everest - here are the results:

Field Value
Sensor Properties
Sensor Type HDD

Temperatures
Maxtor 6Y080M0 64 °C (147 °F)

Based on the other threads, maybe I've got no worries?

 

Your harddrive is running a little warm... You have nothing to worry about. Except your son being exposed to certain words