on idle, my motherboard temp reports at 36C and my CPU reports at 30C. the CPU temp is more than fine but is the mobo temp a bit high?

i got a P4 2.6G (Northwood) and Asus P4P800 SE. CPU heatsink is the Alpha PAL8942. there are 4 Panaflo L's in there and a loud/hot Radeon 9800 Pro (Sapphire) with the stock heatsink/fan.

I'd say you've got nothing to worry about.

In reality your CPU is probably running at 38-40°, but thats still perfectly fine. (Asus configures their mobo's to intentionally under-report CPU temps)

Mobo temps are just about useless, really. The problem is that you have no real idea where its measuring that temp at. On some boards, that diode is part of the NB, on others its situated somewhere on the board itself. Where exactly it is will have a huge effect on its readings. (on my NF7, its between the socket and the RAM, right where the warm air from the CPU washes over it)

I wouldn't worry about its readings at all.

You're using asus PC probe, right? That's probably reporting the CPU socket temps. If you got some other monitoring utiltity, you should be able to configure it to report the CPU diode temperature. There isn't a clear relation between diode and socket temps, the higher the temp, the higher the innacuracy/difference, so the socket temp is kind of useless. I find the motherboard temp sensor useful only for detecting changes in temperature.

mm..actually i'm in linux and using lm-sensors. i dunno what pc probe says. anyway, i installed the arctic vga cooler on my radeon 9800 and it took the mobo temp down to 30C now. cpu says 26C. even if that's 10C higher at 36C, i'm content.