temps??

am running a coolermaster wave master case, abit IP35, 2gb corsair ram and a 2160 being cooled by a zalman 9700.

the case has 2 x 80mm fans pulling air in, 1 x 80mm fan pulling air out and the PSU fan.

with an overclock to 2.7ghz with the side off, my idle temps are around 40, full load are over 50, and if i put the side of the case on they are easily going over 60

this seems rather high to me, esp with a highly regarded cooler.

is this normal and just me worrying, or have i got something wrong somewhere??

temps are being reported by coretemp as tat wont work for me :(

Not sure having so many fans pulling in air is a good thing. The fact your temps are so much lower without the side on suggests you have either a flow or extraction problem.

That said, 60 on the CPU is not world ending if you're overclocking.

maybe i was expecting too much then.

was kinda expecting loaded temps of 40-45 with the side on as i keep hearing how cool the C2D's are!

They are cool running at stock speeds, but just think when you up the voltage that increases the heat load. For example my E6550 @2.5GHz and 1.33v under load was 52oC and when I lowered the voltage to 1.23v the temps have come down to 46oC under full load quite a differance I'm sure you will agree.

As to having 2 fans pulling in and only 1 extracting its better to have more extraction then intake (and you shouldn't be relying on your PSU for extraction), as the case is not air tight you can always pull more air in to make up or the extra extraction, but forcing more air in with extra fans means that a fair amount of the new cooler air is lost through these same gaps which reduces your cooling potential as its not passing over the main heat causing components.

Yes - better to pull air than push!

Over 60 isn't really ideal. It could shorten the life of the chip. I'm not sure what a good temperature for that specific chip is, but when you say over 50 (im assuming that means under 60), with the sides off but an overclock to 2.7, then thats pretty good going.

Generally, a CPU should be a few degrees lower (or more), when the case is ON compared to when its off. Because when its off, there isn't really any air flow. Theres plenty of air, but no flow.. So with the sides on a case, it should get you a couple of degrees or more, lower than with the sides off. You are meant to try to balance the air in with the air out, and you are meant to ignore the PSU in that equation really. So if you have 2 fans sucking air in, you need 2 fans blowing air out the back too. And they need to be the same size and the same speed.

If you only 1 slot on the back, then you could just buy a more powerful fan. It might not be super accurate that way, but atleast a more powerful fan on the back, would have a better chance of matching the air sucked in by the 2 on the front. Its easy to do that too, because there are some really high powered 80mm fans, and you can even find bigger fans that still fit into an 80mm fan slot. It may also be possible to just disable one of the front fans, so the air in and out is even. That might end up being better than having the 2 on the front running.

Having said all that about fans though.... I bet the problem is just the thermal paste. Because it usually is. The thermal paste is a pain in the bum =( Too little is bad, too much is bad. Doing it in a circle is bad. Rubbing it in can be bad. Not rubbing it in can be bad.. Its like a black art or something. So it might just be worth just cleaning off the old paste with thermal paste remover, and then applying some new paste and seeing if that helps. Although, if that cooler comes with paste already on it, and you attached that straight onto a brand new CPU which had never had paste on before.. then you can ignore all that bit about paste :P Let us know how you get on.

I disagree about the paste thing - if the cooling bottleneck is the extraction of heat from the CPU itself then removing the side of the case will make little difference.

The fact that the system temperature seems to be critical (ie you are lowering this by opening the case, and it's having an effect on the CPU temp) suggests that the CPU heatsink/fan combination is actually working very well :)