I7 920 temperature control issues

[Hardline]

I have an i7 920 on an ASUS P6T with 6GB of Corsair DDR3 1600MHz RAM and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. My issue is my system is overheating under heavy load, such as Re-encoding a DVD to an MP4. When idle, the CPU is at 25c, but when I am trying to encode, within 3 minutes, the CPU is at 95c and the system bluescreens. I am using CoreTemp to verify these temps. I am using an admittedly cheap cooler, but it is a 4 Heatpipe design, which has to perform better than the stock cooler. The system is NOT overclocked or has the voltage been tampered with. I thought maybe I had too much heatsink compound on the heatspreader, so i cleaned it off with alcohol and spread a very thin layer across the spreader, reseated the cooler spinning it a bit to get out any air bubbles, but it still overheats. I'm wondering why the thermal protection doesnt kick in and slow the cpu down, instead of crashing. I am considering going watercooling and is why i went with such a cheap cooler, so I could save for a decent watercooling kit. I know this is out of the ordinary, and I am wondering if possibly either there is something wrong with the motherboard configuration for the CPU or the cooler is inadequate. Any input?

 

[Hardline]

I forgot to add, at 25% CPU Load, it is at 60c

 

[LePhuronn]

Your heatsink isn't seated properly - touch it when your system BSODs and see if it's warm - if not then it's not doing its job.

Take it off, clean all the thermal gunk off the chip and heatsink, reapply something decent (Arctic Silver 5 or MX-3) as directed and put the heatsink back on. When it's back on, give the heatsink a gentle wiggle - if it moves AT ALL then it's still not seated properly or your retention mechanism might be buggered.

If it all looks OK and you still have problems, get a new heatsink. In fact, drop the Intel stock fan back on it and see how that goes - it's not the greatest in the world but it's design to do the job of cooling a stock CPU well enough for use.

 

[Hardline]

It looks as if I need a better cooler then. I am using arctic silver already............ The stock cooler is marginally worse than the one I am using. My temps at idle are about 10c warmer with the stock cooler

 

[LePhuronn]

Cogage True Spirit or Scythe Mugen 2 - excellent coolers on the cheap.

If everything's seated properly you shouldn't be hitting load temps that high if you're not overclocking - check the voltage in the BIOS and see what it is, as you may be running something unnecessarily high which is causing the heat to pump out.