Civilization IV is making my CPU get way hot

[Adam8281]

First, please let me know if this should be in hardware rather than software. Obviously both are involved, and I wasn't sure where the best place to post this was. I installed Civ IV today, and for the first time in 3 years my CPU is overheating and locking things up. Here are my system specs (which should be just fine for running a game like this):

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
Pentium 4 2.8C
2x512 PC3200 Geil Ultra Platinum
ATI X800XT-PE

After about 10 minutes of play my CPU is getting up to 73/74 degrees C. I then minimize the game and can watch the temp drop back down. Maximize the game and after a few minutes I'm overheating again. This has never happened with any other game/program I've run, and I've certainly played more visually demanding games than Civ IV. Has anyone else experienced this with CivIV? Any solutions? I'm using the newest patch (1.61 I believe it is).

 

[Maximilian]

Solution: Open up the case and clean all the dust/dirt out of the heatsink that is on top of the CPU. You dont need to remove the heatsink to do this, if you really feel like it (i wouldnt bother but you might ) you can take off the heatsink and remove the old thermal paste and apply some nice new arctic silver 5 too. Removing any dust buildup will suffice though.

 

[Adam8281]

Awesome! Thanks, I'll do that tonight and report back.

 

[Rangoric]

Graphics tends not to matter, Civ 4 is a very CPU based game, has very little demand on the Graphics card in comparison.

All that AI has to be computed somewhere.

 

[Adam8281]

Ah, true. I cleaned out the dust and then played for an hour and the CPU didn't rise about 55 degrees. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Rottie]

Strange thing happened with Civ4 while I am playing and i have ie7 running background civ4 was giving me an error message saying not enough memory then it closed to desktop.

 

[programmer]

c4 does seem to need a lot of memory (as the game progresses). I find it unplayable on my older system with 512MB.