To report on a weekends worth of work, I had two Inspiron 9300's, 1 @ 1.86 w 7800 GTX and 1 @ 1.76 w. 6800Go. So I purchased a 1.6 (400) ($115 on ebay) with the purpose of upgrading both machines as well as applying AS5 to both CPU/GPU's.
The first 9300 has gone from 1.86 to 2.13 and the temps don't appear to have changed much - idle CPU: 30C, GPU: 48-50C 3dmark06 GPU -> 65
running the XPS2 A05 BIOS
The second 9300 got the first's 1.86 cpu and everything is working fine, but the CPU temps appear to have increased, but at the same time that I increased the CPU, I also updated the BIOS from 9300 A02 to 9300 A05.
CPU: 50C, GPU: 45C
My question is why is the CPU on the second machine up at 50C? I've applied Artic Silver to around 30+ CPU's/GPU's in my time. I didn't lap the HS, but I did apply AS5 and buff it off and then apply a rice grain amount of AS5 to the CPU. But these temps seem high. I believe most of the time in idle is without the external fan running at the higher level on the machine and the CPU is actually only clocking at 800MHz (according to Everest which I'm also using to read the temps). Do I need to look into undervolting or remove and ReAS5 the CPU possilby with a thicker layer? What tells the BIOS to kick on the fan so the temps don't go too high? Are there any known heat issues with the 9300 A05 BIOS at idle?
When I apply a load via benchmark testing, the CPU speed goes to max and the fan kicks up louder, though the temp stays pretty close to 50-55C, though I might need to run longer bench testing to see if 55C is the max loaded temp.
P.S: Sorry if this is already covered. I've tried searching through this forum, but there's a massive number of hits on CPU and temperature and I didn't find any specific thread's dealing with high temp CPU's at idle.
sweet, thanks Sheek, i'm gonna have to try my luck then. 'wonders if he should wait for 90 days to expire' ... hmmm 
