Windows 7 - CPU Usage

When I slapped my secondary rig together, I made a mistake and installed my 3500 processor, instead of my 3800 x2, so as soon as I get to it, I'll swap them out, and probably solve the problem, but I have been noticing that the CPU usage and temp is running much higher than I remember it running on that single core processor.

It seems that when I do much of anything, that the CPU will soar to 100% and it's temp will rise to ~65° at the core and ~52° externally (if the operation take long enough for it to heat up). Although the fan speed is not as high as I would like (~3200 rpm), it is sufficient that it should cool better than it is. Since I just assembled the rig, everything is clean, and the processor properly pasted and there was no apparent damage to the CPU, plus there is no unusual obstructions to airflow.

The reason for my question is simply that I like to understand problems as much as possible, even if I can detour around them. This leaves me wondering if the OS is adding to the problem in some manner?

If you could try it with another OS you would know - there have been reports of higher than normal CPU usage in Windows 7 - did you check you bios to see whether any settings might be the cause.

You could disable visuals to see if thats the helps - turn aero off. Start taskmanager and see what processes are using the most cpu usage. It maybe a hardware driver - are you clear in device manager - no yellow asterisks - keep searching keep monitoring you might come up with something.

If you open system information - type "system information" in the start - search - expand hardware resources - go to forced hardware and see if there is anything listed - expand components - go to problem devices and see if anything is listed.

Run this it will check the integrity of your system files - right click command prompt - select run as an administrator - type the following in the window and press enter - SFC /scannow. Have your Windows 7 DVD handy in case it finds any corrupted files.

I just reinstalled the OS again, after swapping out the CPU and it is running ~10° cooler at idle than it was before. This has me wondering if the high temp could have been the reason that the previous installations corrupted? I have always thought of the temp limit as a factor in CPU life, but does it go beyond that?