Scary i7 920 temps - confusing answers in other threads

[doctorhorrible]

I'm running a Core i7 920 on an Asus P6T. Stock cooler, stock clocks, but I had to run out at the last second and buy cheap thermal paste to reseat the heatsink.

What I'm curious about is that it idles regularly in the 42-44C range, and running the Prime95 FFT test, it climbed to 82C and PC Probe II turned red in the temperature range before I nearly **** my pants and turned the program off. It's climbed back down to 43C now.

Is something wrong here? I've never had hanging issues or gotten any overheating warnings, but I'm worried that I could be silently killing this chip. I built it myself so there's no warranty on the machine.

Is this normal?

 

[cjl]

82C is a bit out of the ordinary range, yes. Are you sure the cooler is seated properly? Try pressing down on the cooler while it is running. If the temps drop, it isn't seated properly. You aren't going to kill the CPU though with those temps - it's actually remarkably hard to kill a modern CPU through heat alone.