According to HW monitor 8400 temps are

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

According to Hardware Monitor, my E8400 temps at idle are 41c at stock speed with 0.93v and at an ambient of 69f.

??? shouldn't it be lower?

 

[somethingsketchy]

Seems to be on the dot temperature wise. Have you tried other temp programs? Also are you using a stock cooler or an aftermarket cooler? Personally I wouldn't trust idle temps, unless the CPU is 25c+ above the ambient room temp. I have a Q6600 on an aftermarket air cooler (monitoring temps via Everest's temperature gauge in Vista Sidebar) and the idle temps is hardly 40c. I only trust the temps at 100% usage. Those temps would be your better indicator if something is wrong with your E8400, such as poor application of the thermal paste or one of the mounting pins has come loose or that your heatsink needs to be sprayed down with compressed air to remove dust. Living in a house with a lot of dust and pet hair, I can tell if the heatsink fins needs to be cleaned for dust buildup.

Run something strenuous with the CPU and see what happens. I would be concerned if your E8400 went above the Intel thermal specification.
http://processorfinder.intel.c...tails.aspx?sSpec=SLAPL

Let us know what your results are and if anything else develops.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Haven't tried other apps. I have a Zalman 9500. Whats your opinion on the 9500? I might have to reapply the grease and clean things out. I generally keep my pc clean. The thing that started this is I had it clocked with 400 fsb and the idle Ghz was 2.4 and the stock voltage was 1.2v and it was reading 120f/49c

 

[error8]

This has been discussed over and over again.

Read this to enlighten yourself: http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/docs.php

Basically, there is an error at reporting the idle temperature. The error becomes less important as the temperature increases and you get closer to T junction value. You have to read the whole T junction T case bla, bla, bla documentation to understand this.

Oh, usually the full load temp is much more important then idle temp. You can't burn a cpu when idle.