So I got a killer deal on a Scythe Ashura CPU cooler, but believe I may have botched the install a bit. All was going well, until I tried to tighten the final crossplate to secure the sink onto the CPU. I had a decent sized "dot" of thermal paste in the center of the CPU and lowered the sink onto it. While attempting to secure and screw down the crossplate, I saw the sink slide to the side, so I tried to push it back. When I did, I heard the contact plate separate from the CPU and could clearly hear it pull away from the paste. I quickly pressed it back down and slid the sink back over to center, but I fear that when it was lifted, it may have created air pockets and made for a bad seal with the thermal paste. Temperatures seem pretty good, even under load, but I can't help but feel it could be better. The question is, how much better? I'd hate to reseat the sink with a new application of paste, just to discover it was fine to begin with and theres no improvement lol. I am running an i5 3570K @ 4.2ghz (1.21 vcore) and peak at <65C under load while gaming. From what I've detailed above, does it should like I should go for it? Or just say screw it and leave it because a reseat would not yield that much of an improvement?
Temps look fine. You could always try again to rule out any problems. Fairly sure any potential air pockets get squeezed out during tightening.
Peaks always happen. My 4770K @ 4,5 GHz has peaks of 65-70 as well, it's normal that 1 core does that from time to time. The other 99% of the time my CPU runs at 45-55C during gaming sessions. And that's with the Fan in Silent Mode, which is between 500-750 RPM. (Noctua NH-D15S). I idle at 30C on Desktop.
Thanks for the response guys. My temps seem fine under load, but idle they are in the upper 30's. Isn't that a little high for idle? I might give it a re-seat but am lazy atm, so I'm not in any rush on it lol.
Perhaps it's your BIOS settings. Even though i'm OCed i have things like Speedtest and C-States enabled, so on desktop my CPU goes down to 800 MHz.
