I have tried to find out how to check them through the bios, but I have no clue how to do that. There's nothing during startup that hints at the existence of it, etc. I remember years ago my brother said something about it apparently not using a BIOS. It's an hp pavilion 7955 though. I was using motherboard monitor 5 to check the temperature.

<del>I would touch my heatsink, but it has a fan on top of it and another fan with a casing over it in front of it. </del> I managed to get my fingers back there, and it didn't feel very warm at all. hardly any warmer than the air in the case.

I'm not sure that it's during intense CPU usage. I mean, loading GIMP shouldn't be more strenuous than executing commands on large files in PSP or Photoshop, should it? I dont' remember it making any sounds at all.

I haven't checked for viruses any more often than I usually do (being not at all) but I also haven't noticed any weird out of place processes or startup entries. I guess it wouldn't hurt to scan.