Very hot heatsink problem

[Tylerjmaho]

Hi im building another pc for my friend its got a power supply, Motherboard, Ram and cpu we are still waiting on the gpu and hard drive. Its my old motherboard and cpu its a AMD FX 8320 using the stock cooler it gets very hot when I turn the pc on it gets warm by two minutes and by 5 its hot its a bit dusty and I have never cleaned it before im gonna pick up some canned air tomorrow. My question is can dust cause something like the heat sink to overheat and if I clean it out will it possibly make a difference or is a hot heat sink normal? thanks for your time.

 

[glamdringfh]

A very clogged heatsink will run hotter than a clean one. It would need to be pretty caked for the dust to be the culprit, but if it looks like this then yes, cleaning will help with the heat:

 

[jsmithepa]

Hot heatsink is actually a good thing, that means it's doing its job, if it was cool then it's not sucking the heat from the cpu and that would be bad! 😀

Clean it, and if still not happy with performance, aftermarket (bigger) cooler.

 

[DelroyMonjo]

AMD CPU's of that model run notoriously hot right out of the box. They claim 125 Watt power consumption but driven hard it can reach much higher.
I would think most builders have never even seen an AMD HS/FAN assy. as they never open the box it comes in and use an aftermarket cooler.

 

[Tylerjmaho]

It was the dust I cleaned it out and now its warm but before It could burn your finger if you touched the side of the heatsink