I7 950 high temperatures on stock

Those temps aren't horrible, maybe a little high at idle and stock frequency. What happens the temps when you put a decent load on them? What's the room temperature where the computer is?

Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
My room temperature is in the low 20s. When I stress test using normal settings in OCCT it hits 80 degrees and aborts within a minute.

Seems like you haven't properly installed the cpu cooler. Did you make sure all four of the push pins were completely fastened to the bottom of board?

I got the "clicks" on three of the push pins and then it sounded like the motherboard would crack when I was trying to get the click for the last push pin so I stopped pushing. I looked at it a little on the back side of the board and then pushed a bit more and although I did not hear a clear click I got a firm impression that it was well in place. Can I remove it and try again, or do I have to go out and buy thermal paste and clean the CPU if I want to reseat it the heatsink?

The stock paste is kinda crappy, and if you remove the fan you really should clean it and reapply thermal paste. Thermal paste is somewhere around 5 dollars, and you'll have some for the future.

you don't NEED new thermal paste. The worst thing you should do right now is leave it like that. EIther reinstall the heatsink with all four pins properly seated or buy new thermal paste and do the same while replacing the paste or just get a better cooler.

When you take the heatsink off most of the time the TIM is dry, and will make a good bond almost impossible when you put it back on. For a couple dollars it's a no brainer to me but...

to me too but hey if he has to drive an hour for 2dollar thermal paste it really isn't worth it.

Temps are more or less identical to my 920 when I got it. I picked up a zalman cnps 9700 NT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...) I got it to 3.3ghz at 5c cooler, inexpensive too.

No if it's a big pain in the arse then it's not worth it. Just order the shite and have it delivered if possible.

Those temps are a bit higher then normal for stock speeds. Stock CPU cooler for the i7 are barely up to the task. The cooler also depends on the internal temp of your case and ambient room temps. If your system doesn't run any cooler with the side off then that means you have good air flow through your case   I would get better thermal paste and it should be applied in a line across the cpu, across the two cores, (latch to hinge on the cpu load plate/retention plate. (Video for direction). Artic silver is very good thermal paste. Here is something from their website on applying it. Go to page 5 for a pic of proper alignment and do NOT spread it. The line across the cpu will spread evenly across when you attach the cpu cooler. Applying the thermal paste correctly is just as important as seating the heatsink. I like the Artic Silver "Ceramique" because it doesn't use metal and ceramic is a better heat conductor. Intel's recommended max. operating temp is 67.5*C for the i7 chips. They will run at higher temps but you shorten the MTBF (mean time before failure) the higher you go. If your going to stress test it the stock cooler is never enough to keep temps down. Also, if your regular use puts a good bit of stress on it you will definitely want a better cooler. If you try running OCCT with the box for hyperthreading unchecked your temps won't jump as high as fast but will most likely get there soon enough. Get a different cooler! I know it's a hassle having to get new thermal paste and a cooler, but if you really want to USE your computer some simple upgrades are necessary, especially if you're planning on doing any overclocking. With today's motherboards a small adjustment in the bios and boom you're at 4.0 GHz. But you gotta have good cooling. Those i7's like to build heat so you gotta remove it.

Ok. Thanks everyone for chiming in. I have ordered a Megahalems and it should arrive any day now.


What kind of differences in speed would I see at 4GHz compared to stock speed?
My Windows 7 boot time is 60 seconds more or less now, many proggrams appears to clog it a bit.
What about starting Photoshop, it only takes 10 seconds now, would I see a difference?

/p

Almost 1 whole GHz. back in the day that WAS a processor   So that's about a 25% increase in speed. As far as seconds for loading programs and stuff I really can't give you a "it's 10 seconds faster" answer. But overall you are actually overclocking 4 cores ~ 1 GHz each as well as the 2nd thread for each. If you look at some benchmarks for the difference for stock and overclocked you will be astonished. As compared to overclocking video cards and memory that show some increase in performance the processor overclock is amazing in performance enhancement. When you do get your new Megahalems in and installed and you do the overclock let us know if you see an improvement! Don't forget to go into msconfig and remove any unwanted programs from starting when windows starts - that will speed up your boot time as well as going into bios and making sure you have your boot pauses at 0 and your HDD as the first startup device instead of the cd/dvd player.