Need help with Q6600 B3 Inferno

I got a Q6600 B3 stepping and it runs incredibly hot at stock speeds. I did some research and found this is somewhat normal. I installed with with the stock HSF and thermal material which should work fine, but I was getting 80C+ load using coretemp and PRIME95 4-core torture test. I thought I may have not seated the HSF properly either, but upon inspection it looked and felt solidly clamped down.

So, I removed the HSF, cleaned the proc/HSF and used AS5 with the directions on the arcticsilver site. Again, reseated the stock HSF to ensure all was well. Still using coretemp I am getting 80C+. Heck, with speedfan things seem to top out at 75C using PRIME95 (AFAIK the CPU is rated for 62C using this measurement)! CPU idles between 30C-40C (speedfan) depending on room temp. Regular loads are much lower than PRIME95 quad-core torture test, of course.

Any advice? I really dont have the change to spend on a new HSF. The only thing I noticed with the current HSF is it has a straight scratch on it, but it is in area near the edge that does not appear to make significant contact with the CPU (perhaps from the edge of the LGA775 retaining mechanism?)

These temps seem to be too high, but I know the HSF is seated right and I've tried two different compounds. Airflow should be fine & I'm using an Antec P182 which has plenty of airflow - two 120mm fans near the proc at full blast.

All said and done, I haven't gotten any lockups or stability issues... Though the temps are concerning. Possible this CPU is just meant to put out a ton of heat?

You will not get any better temperature other than purchasing a aftermarket heatsink such as Thermalright ultra 120 extreme.

what speed is your stock fan running at?
Maybe its running to slow, thus not dissipating all that heat.

it should run anywhere from 2200 up to almost 3000rpm if its like a E6600 stock fan.
If its not going up that high, then maybe you have your motherboard bios fan setup so that its always quiet or some manual rpm setting.

Those two 120mm fans you say are near the processor, are those sucking air out or blowing air in and onto the processor.
because if they are really close to the cpu and sucking the air out you will be reducing the efficiency of the processor cpu fan which needs to blow air into the stock HS and onto the board. So try reversing your 120s if thats your arrangement.

thats the problem with stock HS is that although it can keep the cpu cool it does so at a very high rpm and thus is noisy.

thats why i just bought me a Thermalright SI-128 SE, for my Q6600.
The 120mm fan should keep the noise down, and provide adequate cooling.

Do you have any fans you can replace the one on the stock cooler with?

Gotta get rid of that stock hsf.

Thanks for the advice guys. This morning I turned the 120mm fans to low, I may reverse one of them later. Running Prime95 now that AS5 has been in for around 12 hours it looks like my prime95 load temps are peaking at around 68-69C according to speedfan. Still high, but a lot better than yesterday.

Also seems that with full load test, the fourth coure is about 1-2C cooler than the other 3 cores. Seems the first core leads with the highest temp by about 0.5C-1C.

Anyone else have experience with the LGA775 retainer edges scratching the HSF? I saw a couple references on the web, but want to verify there isnt something wrong with my retention mechanism.