Katmia P3 450 idle/load temps are high?

[AoD]

Ok first some system specs for stock settings.
Katmia Pentium 3 450mhz (512k L2)
2 stick PC100SDram (Sandra says one is clocked at 125mhz some reason)
SoYo 6ba+ IV
Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer
VooDoo 3 3000 AGP (Not overclocked but has a small fan on it)
Maxtor (Promise Technologies) ATA/100 Controller card
Junk Modem heh
Maxtor 45gb ATA/100 7200rpm Diamond Max Plus
Quantum Bigfoot ATA/33 8.4gb (RPM 5400 I think)
40x CD-Rom (Type Generic or Atapi heh)
Medium sized Heatsink with a single 4" case fan blowing on it (Home Design, "Home Depot Rocks!"

Now Motherboard Monitor and the Soyo Hardware Monitor both read it idleing from 50-60C at stock settings which is hard to believe. I can get it to 616mhz and not have much of a temp gain and windows will load but does tend to be VERY unstable. Now is this idle temp normal for the Katmia p3 450? Or is something wrong? I have not done anything with the Diodes as my friend asked me earlier (Whom pointed me here 8) ) I have the Vcore set at normal to 2.00 and that got me to 616 just fine for some reason... I don't know why it is reading it so high.. I can touch the heatsink and that thing is nowhere near 50-60C. Could there be some problem with the temp guages or something with the CPU? I have tried everything and nothing seems to get that temperature down but RAIN which setting is set to a Pentium 2 since the thing doesn't have the p3's on the list. Well anything that could help will be appreciated. Thank's ahead of time.
-TroJa

[AoD]

Hmm.. I underclocked it to 66x4.5=300mhz and it still idles at 50C or so... The system temp guage reads around 34C constantly...... Well I don't know this is extremely annyoing now eheheh.. Migth have to get the thing checked? I dunno...

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

I would suspect the heatsink is not getting good contact with the cpu die...did you use good thermal grease? you did say that you are using a h.s. of your own design, I try to reseat it, or pay a little dough to get an aftermarket h.s...and yes I would say 50c is way too high an idle temp. you can find links on this site to some good cooling sites. also you might have too much thermal compound, which would actualy hinder the h.s's performance
That is all I can think of....good luck

[AoD]

Well I reseated this thing 4 times now. I bought some thermal paste and put a thing layer on the die and moved the CPU around as much as I could but the heatsink is supported off the back with the little bracket to hold it into place. The heatsink is an anndtek (I think) With my own fan mounting design. Which its confusing as hell. I thinking the thermal diodes are screwed or something because 300mhz to 600mhz has almost no significant temp gain.. It's just so confusing.

[AoD]

Ok gonna both bump this up and ask something


How can you check the thermal diodes for problems and where are they? hehe