Yes, they do get pretty hot. I had a couple of them running contstantly during the winter and keeping my room at a temp of 70-80 degrees.

On thing that I make sure of is to have plenty of fans running.

Most manufacturer PCs only send with 1 case fan, the CPU/Heatsink/fan and the fan that cools the power supply. You can pickup extra fans pretty cheap. Inbetween $5.00 and $20.00 depending on size, and how quiet they will be.

You can use a program to check out the temp you are running.

motherboard montior is one that I've used.

another is aida32 . It will give you more than just the temp... it'll give you EVERYTHING that you can dream about your PC.

You can also boot into the bios to find out your fan speeds and tempurature for most PCs.