Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

So I just recently finished building my new rig and I've only been worried about one thing; my CPU temps.

I'm using a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus. The cooler is able to rotate a tiny little bit after I installed it, but I looked this up and it's supposed to be normal. The only thing I'd need to be worried about is if it is able to rock back and forth, which it can't. I used the "spreading method" to apply the thermal paste on to the CPU. It's where you put a small gob of paste on the CPU, then put a little baggy over your index finger and spread the paste around evenly. I was following Newegg's 3-part guide on how to build computers and the guy in it used the spreading method.

I've been playing Far Cry 3 to put a decent load on the CPU and the temps get up to 50 c, but no higher. At idle the temps are roughly 33-39 c. I'm using a program provided by MSI called Control Center. It came with my motherboard.

Anyway, all I'm wondering is where my temps should be with this cooler I installed. I'm worried I might have screwed up with the thermal paste application and I'd really hate to have to take this beast out, clean off the paste, then redo it again.

Excellent temps

confirmation:

Your temps are fine.

You would have been fine with the stock heatsink if you don't plan to overclock (hell, you'd be fine with the stock heatsink even if you wanted to overclock to some extent)

People who are anal about the kind of thermal paste and the details of their application method are absolutely ridiculous. In the grand scheme of things, if you apply your thermal paste even remotely correctly then every other factor in the book will be more important. Hell, at stock speeds you could apply any cooler you wanted without thermal paste and it still wouldn't hit the TJ Max for your processor (which is 100C for the 3770K). I'm not saying that you should try this, but I'm saying that you may have gone overboard buying a sick heatsink so you can run at stock, and by worrying about the minute details of your thermal grease application, and worrying about your temperatures that are way on the cool side of things.

tld; Try not to get too carried away with all this enthusiast cooling nonsense. Your temps are good.

Actually, I was going to write a little more, but the computer lab is on fire. BRB.

Thanks that helps a lot. I do plan on OCing the processor in the future, which is why I even bothered to get an after market heatsink in the first place.

I figured I wasn't in any danger zone. I was just trying to make sure I didn't screw something up since this was my first build ever. Good to know everything is running as it should.

As long as you're under 60c you'll be fine. I've oc'ed to 4.5ghz and my max temp is around 55c on a corsair h100. Obviously the case and airflow you have will make a decent impact though.

Realistically even hitting 70c is totally fine, ivy bridge gets pretty hot once you overclock it, so keep an eye on the temps. It's much higher than sandy bridge.