I920 running hot ?

I've looked and looked and looked into this...
This is my build

I had oc'd the thing and had never gotten over 70c under any load I put on it. Battlefield2 didn't like the oc'ing so I'm back to stock.

Now I've decided to put BOINC on it. Which uses 6 out of the 8 cores and keeps the computer going at 80% when I'm not using it. I had it using all 8 and going at 100%...

The problem is: My room was to damn hot to sleep in! Over the winter it was nice not worrying about the heater being on
As I sit here typing this I'm feeling a sweat coming on because of the heat blowing out from under my desk. The CPU temp has maxed out today at 72~74C under full load; the first time it ever has gone above 70C. From what I can tell using non-water cooling this is the normal temps. I just closed BIONC and the temp dropped to 48C... phew

Other than not running BOINC or allowing it to only use 1 or 2 cores is there anything else I can do?

Honestly given the size of the monster heatsink I was a little disappointed in its performance and it had me questioning if I set it right...or just need more fans!

How much of an overclock do you have? I agree, the case does look a bit cluttered. I would spend some time investigating how to manage the wires in there. I should take a few pics of my rig just for examples because I see this a lot. It can take a couple hours to do good cable management.

I have an i7 920 at 3.6GHz. My house is usually around 68F and my temps after 8 hours of Prime95 never went over 45C. I'm using the Thermalright Ultra 120 True Black (lapped) and a 120mm 109CFM Cooler Master fan. It's a loud machine but at least it stays cold

Without hesitating I shutdown and opened up my case when I read the first reply. When I built the system I had intended to redo the wiring but I was all kinds of eager to fire the system up. I had since forgotten all about my intentions, something about 'out of sight, out of mind.'

The first thing I noticed was the side intake looked much like the lint trap in my dryer. Need to remember to clean that more often! When I opened the case it was fairly dust free but was noticeably warm within.



This is the best I can do. The picture may not do justice to how much better it really is! There were two wires I had to run around the backside due to length. Other than that everything is where it belongs:



Shoved into the side 'wire hiding area'! Eventually I will need to replace the one IDE drive with a SATA, but for now it remains where it is. While this PSU was more than adequate for my needs I'd recommend a modular PSU to avoid the situation in the image above.

After 3 hours of running BOINC using all 8 cores at 100% the CPU temp just hit 64~66C. The MB temp remains at 35~37C which is about 12 less than before.

I didn't lap my Mugen2 heatsink. I wasn't sure it was worth the effort and believe it or not at the time buying the sandpaper needed would've put me over budget lol. I did use the Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste though and I'm confident that I did set the heatsink properly. The abnormally high temps had me questioning that though. I've had lots of experience over the years putting cpu coolers on but never before have I put on such a monster. I had thought the heatsink on my dual P3 server was massive

I have not really been overclocking for a few months now. I was only clocking enough to get the full 1333 of the RAM instead of the 1066. Due to updating my BIOS yesterday I need to go redo all the settings to get back to the minor overclocking I did have. Hopefully these changes will not affect my temperatures.

Overall I love this computer and any slight increase in performance is negligible. More importantly is extending the functional life span of the system; increasing the airflow helped to that end and I thank you all for reminding me to do it!

I think going to drill some holes in my Antec 900 and get started on some cable management tonight.