overheating out of BIOS

[nut4crew]

I'm on my second cpu cooler. BIOS will idle at 31C, but when I boot up, and Windows starts to install onto my hd, the temp shoots up. I was told the motherboard may be reading the temp wrong. The guys who were helping me put it together felt the heatsink, and it wasn't hot. I've checked my voltages, updated bios, and am at the point where I'm thinking of returning the mobo. Anything else I should check?

GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC ATX 430W Power Supply 115/ 230 V
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ 2.8GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor
EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB
Thermaltake CL-P0371 92mm Enter CPU Cooler
WD 80GB HD-non SATA

[shadowpr]

Did you try it with the retail heat sink?

How much thermal paste did you put on?

Is the heat sink completely installed and making full contact with the processor?

[nut4crew]

The processor came without heatsink. The first one I tried overheated while idling. We took it on/off three times. I took it into where I bought the fan, they removed it a said it was making good contact. they also said climbing up to 75c was normal. I bought a different heatsink, the paste came preapplied. After a 24 hr cure, I'm now at this point.

[flanzig1]

The guy telling you that a CPU going to 75c is normal is feeding you a line of bull.
With a properly mounted heatsink unit, idle temps should be in the 35c range and under load, around 55c to 60c. 75c is getting into the meltdown range.
It sound like that the heatsink isn't mounted correctly or that something on the motherboard is binding with the heatsink or the clamping which may cause lifting of the heatsink from the CPU.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by nut4crew ... BIOS will idle at 31C, but when I boot up, and Windows starts to install onto my hd, the temp shoots up....

How are you checking temps? I don't know how to check temps during boot up or Windows install. What program are you using? What is the actual temp reading?

[nut4crew]

I'm not checking temps during install. When I'm in BIOS, I'm watching pc health status, which tells me my cpu temp. That's how I know my idle. But I set the alarm to go off when the cpu gets to 60c, and once at 70c, and it goes off within about three minutes of trying to load Windows.