High Temperatures on i7 2600K - Stock Speeds and Heatsink

[Mike.c]

Hi,

I purchased a number of parts last week, which included an i7 2600k and ASUS P8Z68-V Z68. They arrived yesterday and I spent most of last night installing them, along with a fresh install of Windows 7. Once everything was up to date I got a copy of real temps to see what temperature the new CPU was running at.

At idle it was spiking randomly every few seconds (i.e. 40 - 58c), which was a bit concerning, so I unplugged it all and gave the securing pins on the heat sink a push. When I originally installed the heat sink it made audible clicks on all four points and felt secure, but I was able to push a couple of them down marginally further.

This resulted in the spikes at idle going away and temperatures remaining around 30 - 35c - which I thought were decent idle temps. I ran a Prime95 Small FFT test to see how it would cope under load, but within a minute the temps had reached 85c on most of the cores and at this point I stopped the tests.

My gut is telling me that the CPU should not be running that hot, especially not for an extended amount of time and I'm reluctant to keep running it.

I pulled the tower out again this morning and tried the heat sink, but it wasn't moving so the contact should be good. It seems odd that it's fine at idle, but excessively hot under load and I can't work out what might be causing it reach those temps - I know the stock Intel heat sink/fans are not great, but surely they should be able to keep the chip under the recommended temperatures when running at stock speeds. Could it be a faulty chip/motherboard, am I missing something in the settings or is this completely normal?

When I get back from work I will post some screenshots of real temp and the test results.

Any helps greatly appreciated.

Mike.

[Mike.c]

Ok come home and obviously still having the same issue. Here's a screen shot taken a moment ago with CPU-Z, Asus AI Suite and Real Temps runing Prime95 again:



Aside from the temperatures, does there seem to be anything out of the ordinary?