I'm at my moms house right now and she runs a AMD Athlon 800mhz with windows 2000, I was cleaning out her computer of dust and accidentally broke her fan that blows air on her heatsink, I replaced it with a new fan but thats not my question but it brought me to it. The temp is up to 42 degrees celcius and I am wondering if its normal to be this hot? Its currently 81 degrees farenheit here in LaCrosse WI and that does have an effect I know but still, is it normal to run at this temp? Plus she doesnt have any place to add fans, do you reccomend those coolers that fit in a pci slot bay and blow air out from there? Help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Raven

If the computer doesn't randomly reboot or freezes or smells of burning then it probably isn' ta problem...if those things happen then yes install a better or extra fan.

Speaking of burning, heh she was complaining of no sound, so I was looking at stuff and the Back of her monitor had signs of melting, needless to say I was rather worried and bashed the back of her computer desk out. Hopefully it wont happen again but later I found that somehow the audio cable had melted, perhaps it was a rather large build up of heat in the general vicinity of the computer but the strange thing is that the audio cable was no where near the monitor...I am at a loss of how this happened and no one seems to remember a smell of burning plastic...probably computer demons...

if the audio cable was inside the case then get a fan for sure...the monitor is malfunctioning somehow (or has been on for years straight lol) maybe bad capacitors or too much flow of juice from the AC outlet...test the AC outlet of the monitor. (you can get an outlet tester from the dollar store)

she says it has been left on for a while at times, this is the first time i've even seen this computer since november or october '03 (well I was here once around february or march but I didnt look at the computer), but I am sure that she''ll keep it off at night and when she is not here.

Any fan will keep an athlon 800 cool at 42degrees its not excessively hot.. I wouldn`t be too concerned about it. but make sure u keep other wires and cables away from the fan :-)
and of course make sure the monitor and pc case airholes arent covered or blocked in.

Thanks for the help. I'm sure she'll be happy to hear that.

That is fine, that is about what my P4 is running at.