Chipset running hot. (160 degrees F/71 degrees C)

[xomm]

One of the components of my motherboard (a Nvidia NF-430-N-A3 chipset) is running at a peak temperature of 160F/71C.
I'm thinking this is a bit unsafe; how would I go about cooling it down? (It's summer where I live, highs of 95F/35C).

If it helps, I have a Dell Dimension E521 (only RAM and PCI cards were changed), the rest of my computer averages out at 100F-120F/38C-49C, and I am measuring it with a surface infrared thermometer.

Thanks.

 

[kajabla]

That temperature should be OK. However, it's being caused by some other part; there's no motherboard component that can get that hot by itself. Get some temperature monitoring software like Speedfan or Hardware Monitor and see how hot the main components are.

 

[xomm]

Using SpeedFan, I only saw the GPU and Core temperatures, which were 49C and 46C respectively at idle. I tested some temperatures while playing Team Fortress 2, and average temperatures were at 60C and 55C respectively.

I couldn't see any other temperatures with Open Hardware Monitor (I did see my second core, but the difference between the cores was negligible, with a maximum of 3 degrees difference.)

 

[popatim]

Its probably time to reapply thermal paste on the chip; if it even has any (often they just have the heatsink sitting on them bare)

 

[xomm]

Its probably time to reapply thermal paste on the chip; if it even has any (often they just have the heatsink sitting on them bare)

It doesn't have any cooling apparatus on it at all...

Only after going through Micro Center to plan out a new computer (The Dell recently kicked the bucket due to an unrelated incident) did I realize that most pre-built computers don't have chipset fans/heatsinks...

 

[xomm]

Best answer selected by xomm.