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I live in Australia too. 3 computers I look after are located in an small room. The temperature monitoring software on the computers was warning us that things were getting to hot. So after trying a few different things we settled on putting an air conditioner in the room. This is then set on a timer controller which turns the air conditioner on for several hours, a few times a day to keep the ambient temperature in the room to an acceptable level.

In the winter we don't need to use it air con at all, in fact we are just starting to use it again now that the weather has heated up.

The other thing I have done is set up Motherboard monitor and SNMP Informant - Motherboard Monitor Edition. I then use MRTG to graph the temperature of the motherboard and cpu. With this information you can use it to only turn the air con on when it is really needed.

Don't forget bus scanning software like AltiPCI. Want to know exactly what video card you have installed, but have lost the box? Tough.

Also there are CPU temperature monitoring programs like Motherboard Monitor. I know a lot of folks swear by that program.

Ok, everyone knows on linux you use gkrellm, but on windows it's gotta be motherboard monitor http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

For web ad/pop-up blocking, I still recommend the no-longer-maintained Proxomitron. A proxy-based filter that screens for banner ads and pop-ups. It's got a very active user base and mailing list.

While I question the value on a laptop, for desktops, I always install the latest version of Motherboard Monitor. It keeps an eye on your system's health - temperature and fans. Again, probably not as useful (or even compatible) for a laptop.

I'm curious if you actually overloaded a Dell powersupply using PCI-compliant equipment, or if you you just jacked-off to "Tom's Hardware" and actually believe the Bogo-Watt numbers on those cheap Chinese shitbox supplies.

We had several Dell Optiplex 1GHz Celeron boxes (200W power supplies) at work with dual Barracuda IV IDE drives (configured by Dell) that were flakey with both drives hooked up and stable with only one drive powered. Installing Intel's Application Acceleration drivers, basically fancy drive caching, also fixed the problem; whether it was a software bug the IAA drivers fixed or a power supply overload the caching masks (the crashes usually occurred when all drives were hit at once, like when you first fire up Explorer) is hard to say and I walked away at that point. Why we should have had to hunt down drivers from Intel's website to get a stable machine is another question. In either case, Dell sucks.

On a 185W IBM/Antac supply, I'm currently running 2 600Mhz Katamis, 6 PCI + 1 AGP (including a WinTV), and 3 10K SCSI drives. No problems at all. I'm sure Dell's stuff is the same way.

That's nice. Two relatively low power sub-GHz CPUs, an AGP video card that likely draws a LOT less power than a GeForce4 Ti-series (Radeon 9700 Pro's have external power connectors and the GeForceFX might have one too), far slower bus speeds and higher latencies. Your system isn't as picky about voltage regulation and isn't drawing the power that a modern GHz-class machine is. Swap in a P4 and watch it choke. Oh, you can't do that, your power supply doesn't have the additional four-pin 12V connector the P4 (and dual processor Athlons) require. Silly me. Do yourself a favor and run Motherboard Monitor so you can watch your voltage levels bounce around.

Conclusion: Go play with your Turbo Button, clone-master.

Says another 13-year-old AC with overindulgent parents and too much time on his hands. Yawn.

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ has the programs. they're for windows...motherboard monitor keeps you informed of the temp (and you can set it to email you if your equipment hits a certain temp or something) and you can also set it to trigger ShutDownNow (linked from that site above)...which will do the shutdown routine for Windows.

Under both Windows (Motherboard Moniter) and linux (lm_sensors) software exisits that can moniter the built in thermal and fan sensors that most modern motherboards have, and can be configured to shut down your computer when it overheats or a fan fails.

If the motherboard supports temperature and fan monitoring (and the power supply and processor fan supply a fan clock to the monitoring circuit) you can install an utility like MBM (Windows) or lm_sensors (linux) together with a shutdown utility like "ShutDown NOW!" (http://www.dworld.de according to my link list, but the site seems to be down).

If a temperature, voltage or fan speed exceeds the limit set by you or falls below it, the system is shut down after a warning.

I agree -- 64C sounds too high. Here is a good article on the subject from Via Hardware.

I recommend the following three steps to cool it down:

1. Run H.ODA's WPCREDIT/WCPRSET and set the ACPI HALT cooling on, if your processor is running at under 1.33 GHz or if you're not running Win2K. This will keep your idle temperature down. See the end of the VIA Hardware article for the admonition about CPU speed and Win2K stability.
2. Use Arctic Silver II thermal paste. I bought some at Fry's and it's pretty cheap. It brought the temperature down 2-3C under load.
3. Try the NoiseControl Silverado fan, if it fits in your face. North Americans no longer have to buy it from Germany, as Plycon sells it in the US now.

I have a 1.2GHz Athlon which I run at about 1.35GHz by upping the FSB. My IWill KK266 board claims that it idles at 26C, and it gets up around 41C during heavy use, and 49C in a tight loop.

I have a shutoff at 50C, which it last reached when Outlook went into a tight loop overnight. I ran a program called MBM to check on it, and it recommended a program called Shutdown Now to shut down and power off in case of alarm. Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed that Shutdown Now was nagware, and my system was up all night at 50C, sending me pages every 5 minutes. When I got to work in the morning, there was a pop-up dialog saying to please send in $15 to them before it would shut off my computer. Talk about lame! It would have been fine to nag a boot time, not not at shutdown time! I'm just glad the program didn't fry my CPU. Anyway, I replaced it with the NT Resource Kit program called shutdown.exe that took a little bit of mousing around to get into MBM's configuration, but no way was I going to give money to the guy who almost fried my computer.

The whole "Tom's article on the heat sink falling off" bullshit is silly. If the water pump in your car fails and you keep running it then your motor will burn up. Luckily we have temperatore gauges on most autos to let us know when our car is overheating.

AMD CPU's, for the most part, kick mule all over Intel's offerings at the same rated speed. If you follow normal precautions with your CPU (i.e. fasten the heatsink properly) the likelihood of the heatsink "falling off" is next to nil.

Tom speaks about both a heat-sink falling off and fan failure. For the latter I'd recommend taking steps to see that your heat-sink is up to snuff. Yes, yes, yes...I'm well aware that passive cooling won't work for the overclockers but if your fan kicks out and you're not around it's nice to know that you might be able to survive a CPU meltdown if the heatsink itself is robust. I'm not saying that this is the way you want to run your rig but it might be enough to save it in an emergency.

I've used many types of cooling systems from water-cooling to peltier to a failed experiment in immersing a motherboard in mineral oil (kinda like a Cray) and I've found that a nice old-fashioned big-ass heatsink will get you by. Peltiers are dangerous because if they lose power they actually start acting like and insulator and speed up the destruction. Water cooling works great for cooling but I'm still nervous leaving the machine on when I'm not around, I get the same feeling when I leave my place with the dishwasher on. Most heat sinks that come with off-the-rack systems are useless, I buy heatsinks as birthday presents for people I know that have bought Dells. If the heat sink falls off there's not much you can do unless you've got a successful mineral-oil-immersed motherboard ;)

Here's some good info sites:

www.ocaddiction.com

www.coolerguys.com

www.overclockershideout.com

www.frozencpu.com

www.extremecooling.org

Motherboard Monitor a nice utility.

Highly configurable, and you can get it to page you when your computer's burning :)

I wouldn't overclock the processor, but some OC tricks will be useful...

Consider watercooling this machine. I would have picked a CPU that won't heat your house, but that's irrelevant at this point.

Consider getting a peltier if you've got a beefy powersupply, it's not your electricity!

Seal the case and the enclosure well! I had a box crap otu on me because mice got inside. They pissed all over the motherboard. I got the sucker, found him trapped under the HD enclosure.

Consider setting up a cam pointed right at the enclosure.

Definately get MBM so you can remotely monitor the temperature.

Good luck!

(me: 433@487 Celeryo. CPU temp: 59C. Ambient: 82F)