Under a full load, my CPU was hitting almost 190 degrees F, more than 30 degrees above the safe limit. The motherboard was overheating badly, too, hitting 120 degrees. Anything over 100 degrees, either motherboard or CPU temperature, is a problem, says Ben Evans, co-owner of 3Dcool , which specializes in cooling products for PCs. You want to keep the feel your PC has when it's off and at room temperature while in operation. Heat can cause all kinds of computer problems that would probably have most of us swearing at Bill Gates and blaming Windows for the problem.
Heat can cause blue screens of death, hardware failure, system crashes, and lock-ups.
Video-card fans are useless, according to Evans, blowing about as strong as a normal breath exhales. For starters, you need a decent CPU fan. Table after table at the fairs had a dozen or more CPU fans sitting out on the table, and when I asked the difference, the people behind the table just shrug. To them they are all the same, and to some degree they are correct. They are all pretty weak.