Cooling 2500 running hot

I have a anthlon Xp 2500 i oced to 2.2ghz ive had for about a year now and all the sudden it is running hot. Its air cooled and i had 1 fan blowing air on cpu area and then 1 outake and the psu. All the sudden the thing started idling at 44c which is high becuase days before it was idealing at 38 or around. I changed my airflow setup and added more powerful fans and more fans to be precise changed old fans from panflos which ran pretty good and were quite to some evercool aluminums which blow more air. I also changed my psu to a coolmax with a big 120 fan on it running on auto. ANother also is i moved the 2 panflos to the front of the case to blow more air in. No change still running 44c so i changed the cpu cooler fan from a panflo to a morepowerful fan from a psu and again no change. After no change there i underclocked it and droped the voltage still no change.

Just curios i know 44 isnt that bad and tops the thing goes to 50c but why doesnt the temp change whenever i add more stuff or underclock it. I undervolted it some and it still runs at 44 so i dont knwo what is up. COuld the sensor be bad i know mobo sensors suck but i should still see change. Or is the chip maybe going phyco and doesnt want to cool any.

Im planning on wc'ing the rig in the next couple months but ill upgrade sooner if the chip doesnt cool down some.

 

When you first turn on your PC does it readd 44 straight away or does it build up to it? It sounds like a fault with the sensor to me.

 

When I had my 2500 on air the temps would range quite a bit especially when playing with the voltage, so i'd tend to think its the sensor as well.

 

IT builds up in bios its 40 then by startup its 44 now. Just doing the internet right now its running 46c which i think is high for just using firefox. Weird thing is even when playing the bf2 demo the highest it goes is 50 period infact every game i play it goes to 50 bam thats it.

 

Close all open apps and post back with CPU load. it may be that you've got a vurus or spyware that's using your CPU.

 

It wouldn't be loads of dust and fluff caught up in your heat sink??

 

I second coolmiester. Since this happened over a long time dust would be the probable cause.

 

ok, maybe not the sensor. I had the impression that the temp reported 44C regardless of what you did. Have you tried reseating the heatsink? Maybe you could've bumped the heatsink unseting it momentarily. The film that most thermal pastes make don't take kindly to much movment of the heatsink.