i5 3570k 104 C at idle temps!

[traplord]

As the title states my cpu is running at 104 degrees C when I'm not doing anything. I recently just cleaned my PC (got rid of dust, no compressed air used) and I almost 99% believe that I may have messed up the placement of my heatsink (stock cooler). This problem only occured today right after I dusted out my PC. I only noticed this because right before I dusted it, all my games were running fine. After dusting it my FPS considerably dropped in all titles, common stutters, game freezing, etc. The temps for my motherboard and my GPU are fine; ranging around ~28C for the motherboard and ~48C for the GPU while idle. I desperately need advice as to what I should be doing. Is there anything I can do to lower the temperatures or will I have to reinstall the heatsink? I'm still not completely sure if the heatsink is the cause of this. Sorry if I sound stupid, I'm not really a tech guy but I need assistance.

The rest of my specs :
MSI Z77A-GD65 LGA 1155
MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro RSA00-AMBAJ3-US 1000W
OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Western Digital WD Blue WD10EALX 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

[Tradesman1]

Sounds like the heatsink, clean it off and reapply new thermal compound then reinstall

 

[TheTemest]

Agree with all of the above. I wouldn't wait for some miracle advice. Just reseat the heatsink/cooler with some new thermal complound and move on with life. Same thing happened to me 2 years ago and after adding two case fans, changing positions of the HD and optical drives, tied up all the cable, etc, etc, the problem persisted until I dealt with the heatsink. FYI: doing everything other than the heatsink dropped the temp by 14 degrees, so I would always recommend improving ventilation regardless if there's a temp issue or not.

 

[traplord]

Agree with all of the above. I wouldn't wait for some miracle advice. Just reseat the heatsink/cooler with some new thermal complound and move on with life. Same thing happened to me 2 years ago and after adding two case fans, changing positions of the HD and optical drives, tied up all the cable, etc, etc, the problem persisted until I dealt with the heatsink. FYI: doing everything other than the heatsink dropped the temp by 14 degrees, so I would always recommend improving ventilation regardless if there's a temp issue or not.

I just ordered thermal paste online and it's going to come in a week. Until then would you advise me to try not to use my PC at all or just simple browsing? I actually tried playing a couple of games at first (CSGO and TF2) and the FPS somehow smoothed itself even with 104 C under load. Very weird.