How long have you had it. You may have gotten a bad chip that you might need to RMA or get it replaced via warranty. My q6600 was running hot idling at like 55-60C with no OCing. Now I think my censor is broken because it under load its saying like 90C.

I just hope intel gives me a new chip. I've only had the thing about 4 months and its been acting up for the last week or so. I haven't OC'ed it or anything its actually toned itself down to 2.13ghz because it thinks its too hot..

Well it stayed on long enough for me to get into the BIOS. I went straight to the temp readings and it was at 80C and rising fast so I powered it down.

I guess I'm just inept at applying compound and seating the heatsink. I did go to a local computer store and bought a new syringe of thermal compound. Does this stuff go bad over time?

I reseated the ram and followed osam0's instructions for applying the compound. I also reseated the processor and there was no scorch marks or compound anywhere there shouldn't be. This is time it stayed on longer it went into the vista progress bar and then cut out.

My mobo is a gigabyte GA-P35-ds4 board. The cpu is a q6600 G0 set to stock speeds. 4gigs in 2,2 gig sticks. 8800gts 640mb.

Also the temperatures that originally swayed me to reapply compound was around 55-60C idle with stock cooling..

I removed the old grease from both ends(the heatsink and processor). Then I applied the new grease to the cpu only a thin even layer all the way across. I used a screw driver as the instruction manual said to lock the heatsink fan back in place and it seems to be in there firmly.

I removed the heatsink again and there is no paste stuck to the heatsink, so I'm thinking maybe I should put some more on?

Trying that and see how it goes.

My computer was running hotter than it should be at stock speeds so I took the heatsink off and removed the thermal grease and reapplied it. Now when I go to startup my computer it powers down after 2 or 3 seconds not even posting?

What could be the problem here? Is something creating a short. I don't think anything became unplugged and the heatsink is firmly inplace with fan spinning.

Any suggestions would be wonderful.

I'm looking for a non major company to buy a laptop from for my wife. I've been scouring ebay and that will probably remain my best option. I'm looking to spend less than 500$ but still get a powerful laptop.

Any suggestions?