Im in the process of a machine upgrade. Having recently jumped from 4GB of DDR2-800 to 8GB, today I made the change from the original AMD Athlon II 2.6GHz dual-core processor to an AMD Phenom II 2.6GHz quad-core CPU.

I am still awaiting a new more powerful cooler, and so at present the core temperatures are higher than I would like. To reduce these, ive throttled back the BOINC client to use no more than 70% of CPU time but still all four cores,

But is this the best way? To keep temperatures down Is it better to use more cores but less cpu time, or allow 100% cpu time but restrict the client to fewer cores?

Phenoms do run quite hot, and certainly benefit from a good non-stock cooler as the stock one is "pretty poor".

Well ive been monitoring the core temps now for about an hour, and have put the time back up to 100%. Its topped out at 73c. To my mind that rather high, but it does seem stable and the machines running fine. Watching the temps in CPUID shows mostly around 71-72c. This is the newer 125W thermal envelope version and power consumption topped out as expected at 124.8W. Idle temperature is 39-41c

It also seems that the specs of coolers are impossible to decypher! Ive tried looking for 125w/140w coolers, and cant figure out whats suitable. It seems no one spcs cpu coolers in deg/W like we do for any other heatsink system!

Yeh, most 3rd party cooler specs are very opaque :-(
Recently I've been using various Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO coolers as they are (normally) quite easy to obtain, are not very expensive and will take standard 120mm fans. They certainly "encourage" lower CPU temps than stock coolers on FX8250 and similar CPUs.

After some help from a local PC guru, finally worked out the specs and am awaiting delivery of a Coolermaster Hyper 212LED, should be with me in a couple of days.

In the meantime, im running it down at 50% CPU time just to keep the temps lower