3570k running too hot on noctua nh-d14?

[Fithos]

I have the 3570k and the Noctua nh-d14 and am my temps in RealTemp seem too high. First off my 3570k is not overclocked at the moment. I just put the system together and wanted to check temps before I started OCing.

At idle my 4 cores are the following 38, 24, 25, 33. That doesn't seem right to me having a 14C difference @ idle on the cores. At load my temps reached the following on the 4 cores; 71, 73, 71, 69.

Did I not use enough thermal paste perhaps? I know for a fact I didn't use too much.

 

[Fithos]

Oh, and the directions were pretty vague on the amount of thermal paste to use. They said to put a small dot about 4-5cm in diameter in the center of the cpu. Well, I can fit a lot of thermal paste or very little in a 4-5cm diameter depending on how thinly I spread whats there. I spread the thermal paste kinda on the thin side as it said too much will make temps hotter, but maybe I didn't put enough on.. hrmm.

 

[Orlean]

I would clean it off and reapply thermal paste. The idle temps look normal but the load temps on the other hand don't specially at stock with a NH-D14 cooler. I've used the traditional pea sized method and let the base of the cooler spread it out and that's worked for me without problems. What are the ambient temps and what thermal paste did you use ?

 

[amuffin]

How is case airflow?

Test this by taking the side panel off and seeing the difference in temps.

 

[Fithos]

Airflow is great. I am going to reapply the thermal paste. I am using the paste that came with the hsf which is the Noctua NT-H1.

 

[Fithos]

I reapplied the thermal paste and used more than last time. My idle looks roughly the same at 37, 22, 25, 33 but my load temps dropped to 57, 54, 55, 56. When I took off the heatsink the old thermal paste had spread out to a circle about half an inch in diameter. Most of the cpu did not have any thermal paste on it. I tried to use as much thermal paste required to spread out to about a 1" circle and no more. In my case, less was not more