LGA775 Prescott CPU Temperature

I have an ASUS MB w/ a 3.4 GHz LGA775 CPU (Prescott). The CPU nominally runs at roughly 60 degrees celcius, but when I do any thing CPU intensive -- like rendering video off of my Digital camcorder, the CPU temperature jumps up to 78 degrees celcius. I'm using the fan that came with the chip and placed a drop of Artic Silver on the chip (I removed the square pad on the heat sink). The CPU fan is rock solid at 2500 RPM.

Two questions:

What is a normal high and nominal temperature for my CPU?
Should I replace the Intel cooling system with an after-market system? If so, which kind is the best?

Thanks.

Those do sound high. Be sure you have space around the case for good airflow, and have all the case fans your case has room for. If you have that already, look around for a good compatible cooler. You want all copper, and as big a fan as possible. Thermaltake makes a good one.

I am running a Prescott 3.6 on an Asus P5GD1 board, with a Chieftec Dragon Server, and seven fans. The prescott cooler of choice is:

GH-PCU21-VG
(3D Cooler-Pro)

Which is a heatpipe cooler like the TT one, but does not have to be manually assembled, and ground down to fit around motherboard parts such as capacitors, etc. I tried to use the TT CL0025 Silent Tower, and it is garbage! It cannot be adequately secured with the 4 screws and plates, and nuts and all. The GB cooler has an adapter for the LGA775 you need to get extra, and it clips in place securely. I run it with normal 800 FSB, and I am at 33-35 deg C idle and 39-43 full load! It is an awesome, efficient cooler, and well worth the 39.99 + 3.99 for adapter I paid. I highly reccomend it for Preschott.

I could be wrong (depending on which MB from ASUS) but you have a setting Q-Tech in the bios to disable or enable the fan control. I would check that out first before replacing the standard intel cooler.
Michel Erwich