First here's my specs: Antec P180b case Gigabyte P965-DS3 Motherboard 2gb PC2-6400 XMS2 RAM eVGA 8800 GTS 640mb OCZ GameXstream 700W 320gb Seagate 7200.10 SATA harddrive sound card, opticals not really relevant... Anyways, I have my comp up and running (finally), and it just seems like termperatures are significantly higher than most other peoples. I have coretemp, TAT, the BIOS tool and speedfan, but don't really know how to work them that well. From what I could find out, from BIOS and TAT, my idle temps are about 40-41 degrees. I have stock cooling and AS5 applied. When I do that load test in TAT, my temps go up into the high 50's. So I'm not really sure what the problem is, but people are reporting low-mid 30 temps with stock cooling, even with a small overclock. One possible problem could be that I added too little thermal past. I covered the whole thing, but maybe it was too thin of a layer? I dunno. Second possibility. I have my CPU fan set to auto. Should I set it to run at a particular speed (or can I even do that?), or is it how it should be. Because all I know is that it seems to be running not dangerously hot, but hotter than seems normal. Thanks.
in my experience (also being very sucessfull) you should only put a very small amount of AS5 on the cpu, im talking about a few grains of rice in the centre of the cpu!! its THAT tiny, just enough so that the heatsink will spread the paste as thin and long as possible. dont smeere it around the cpu because the heatsink being squashed down will do all that correctly make sure you have q-fan disabled in bios that will lower temp. STEP 1 you need to remove the heatsink and cpu, clean them both so there is no paste on them, of course you MUST remove the stock paste /pad on the heatsink before applying your own paste THIS IS ESSENTIAL. now your cpu and heatsink is completely clean (the heatsink copper base should be completely bare, paste /pad completely removed, if there is a thermal pad on the heatsink scrape it all off and get ready to start again with putting it back. STEP 2 now stick the cpu in the motherboard, put a VERY SMALL blob of AS5 in the CENTRE of the cpu, then place the heatsink firmly ontop of it, DO NOT TURN OR TWIST THE HEATSINK WHEN IT MAKES CONTACT WITH THE PASTE ON THE CPU STEP 3 lock the heatsink in place on the motherboard locking it vertical by vertical (ie, lock down pin 1, then 4, then 2 and finally 3) this ensures the paste levels out equally good luck, if still overheating it might be a duff heatsink, or too much paste was put on, too much paste prevents propper heat seperation
