Ok. Ihen I´ll do this tomorow. If this doesn´t help, I´ll consider getting water cooling (My mum will freak out when I do this!)

If it doesn't work then you need to know what's wrong, not just get a water loop

Just did a 10 min cover up test with OCCT. The temp´s had it´s peark at 80°C. I also did watch how the fans behave and how much airflow is th the case and now I think I can conclude what gives me these high temperatures:It´s in fact an interaction of multiple factors. At first is there the incorrectly applied TIM which will be corrected tomorow. And as a second factor the bad airfrow because of to much wires in the case so that the air from the front fan won´t come to the CPU cooler. I will see what I can do to this. Maybe I have to get a bigger case but don´t wan´t a new one because ther is no money for such a new case. Or new case fans which suck more air into the case.

Thanks for your ideas so far. I´ll gonna check them as soon as I can. Does someone know a programm which shows the fan speeds?

Steffen you might try AIDA64 Extreme Edition. You can get it all you sensors from that software, plus some nice benchmarks to evaluate memory function.Noel

So far I restetted everything back to default. This guide you´ve linked is relly good. I think I´lll gonna do it the way they say. In this guide they say soemthing about RAm oc and timings. I´ve seen that my RAM has an X.M.P. profile. Isn´t it better to enable this in the bios rather than setting the RAM up by hand? Currently it´s running at 1333MHZ and CL9-9-9. But with X.M.P. it´ll be CL7-9-7.They also say that I should get the newest BIOS version. I´m currently on 1506 version. Is this a good one or should I do an update? Hopefully I get it running on 4.5GHz today so that I can set up the rest of the sim tomotow.

Steffen, don't go crazy trying to run your parts on the edge of failure. The cost:benefit isn't there. Find a nice 'safe-ish' overclock and call it good. At 4GHz you already should have wonderful performance, unless it's mostly bragging rights that floats your boat. I killed a main board a while back trying to push the FSB more than it should have been, and as others have said, leaving the NB on auto is probably what killed it. I bought marginal memory then tried to get too much out of it.Noel

Remove all the TIM with isopropyl alcohol from the CPU and reapply: just a rice grain size drop

Dazz, I've always started with a acetone-cleaned case, and then used a very cleaned and dried finger to apply thermal paste to both the CPU case and the HS surfaces, and spread the paste out to the edges but not past being mindful to never get any extra anywhere else, and always had good cooling results. A rice-grain sized drop sounds very very tiny. Where did you learn this approach from? Sounds much easier for sure.What sort of temp should we be seeing w/ the SB processors? The temps Steffen describe sound terribly high. Do these run much hotter than Core2Quads?Also if you will, I O/C setting CPU, NB, and DRAM voltages manually. But I do have several other settings on AUTO. Are there others I should be mindful to set manually besides those three? Thanks in advance . . .Noel

After a hard afternoon of rewiring and some cleanup in the case I´m running again. Below is the picutre how it´s looking now.Btw. I had to attach the GFX card to the second PCIe port and now I have some strange errors. Should the GFX card be on port 1 all time?

Dazz, I've always started with a acetone-cleaned case, and then used a very cleaned and dried finger to apply thermal paste to both the CPU case and the HS surfaces, and spread the paste out to the edges but not past being mindful to never get any extra anywhere else, and always had good cooling results. A rice-grain sized drop sounds very very tiny. Where did you learn this approach from? Sounds much easier for sure.What sort of temp should we be seeing w/ the SB processors? The temps Steffen describe sound terribly high. Do these run much hotter than Core2Quads?Also if you will, I O/C setting CPU, NB, and DRAM voltages manually. But I do have several other settings on AUTO. Are there others I should be mindful to set manually besides those three? Thanks in advance . . .Noel

Normally they should be a lot lower than Core2Quad at the same speed the shoud AFAIK arround 70°C or a bit more but certainly not arround 85°C. I think I found the culprit. It was teh wrong applied TIM together with the bad airflow through the case because of too much wires in the way and misplaced GFX card.Btw. there is no Northbridge on Sandy Bridge models. I have all voltage setting on auto except ot the CPU and the RAM voltage.

Dazz, I've always started with a acetone-cleaned case, and then used a very cleaned and dried finger to apply thermal paste to both the CPU case and the HS surfaces, and spread the paste out to the edges but not past being mindful to never get any extra anywhere else, and always had good cooling results. A rice-grain sized drop sounds very very tiny. Where did you learn this approach from? Sounds much easier for sure.What sort of temp should we be seeing w/ the SB processors? The temps Steffen describe sound terribly high. Do these run much hotter than Core2Quads?Also if you will, I O/C setting CPU, NB, and DRAM voltages manually. But I do have several other settings on AUTO. Are there others I should be mindful to set manually besides those three? Thanks in advance . . .Noel

Yeah, SB runs cooler, actually on air you're most likely going to be limited by volts rather than temps when OCing. I'm sorry Noel, I'm not familiar with Core 2 and have no idea what othe voltages play a roll there, but with Nehalem there was also this Vpll (clock generator) Vpch(southbrige, so to speak) and Vtt (IMC voltage)

After a hard afternoon of rewiring and some cleanup in the case I´m running again. Below is the picutre how it´s looking now.Btw. I had to attach the GFX card to the second PCIe port and now I have some strange errors. Should the GFX card be on port 1 all time?*pic*Normally they should be a lot lower than Core2Quad at the same speed the shoud AFAIK arround 70°C or a bit more but certainly not arround 85°C. I think I found the culprit. It was teh wrong applied TIM together with the bad airflow through the case because of too much wires in the way and misplaced GFX card.Btw. there is no Northbridge on Sandy Bridge models. I have all voltage setting on auto except ot the CPU and the RAM voltage.

why did you change the orientation of the heatsink man?

why did you change the orientation of the heatsink man?

I did only change the orientation of the fan. Now it sucks the air comming from underneath and from the GFX card into the heatsink and will be blown out through the rear fan. After some tests how the air is moving through my case I found this is the best way. Just made some tests with my current setting. OCCT gave me temperatures of arround 70°C and 74°C as the hightest value. Idle is between 36 and 41°C. I think this is pritty where I wanted to be.

As the others have said, definitely a cooling problem. I would have expected Prime95 to give temps in the 60-70C range at 4.5Ghz.

OMG, now I see what happens: in your first pic you had the fan mounted on the wrong side of the Mugen. Your new fan config is right, blowing air perpendicular to the heatpipes. but now it's blowing bottom to top. Usually you get better performance with a front to back config, but you have to flip the cooler 90º for that. When the GPU is in use and not only running OCCT's CPU stress test, the CPU is going to take all the hot air from the video card and probably your CPU temps will raise a fair bit

As the others have said, definitely a cooling problem. I would have expected Prime95 to give temps in the 60-70C range at 4.5Ghz.

Sried Prime95 as you wrote your post. The Temp varies between 67°C and 74°C. I think this is pritty ok for 4.6 GHz.

OMG, now I see what happens: in your first pic you had the fan mounted on the wrong side of the Mugen. Your new fan config is right, blowing air perpendicular to the heatpipes. but now it's blowing bottom to top. Usually you get better performance with a front to back config, but you have to flip the cooler 90º for that. When the GPU is in use and not only running OCCT's CPU stress test, the CPU is going to take all the hot air from the video card and probably your CPU temps will raise a fair bit

I don´t think that I can mount that cooler in a 90° angle from how he´s now muonted.

this is a Mugen 2 in a P55 board, unless it's the Rev.B or something I guess you should be able to. I don't know, test it with prime95 and furmark at a time, if your CPU temps don't get much higher after 5 minutes, just leave it like that

this is a Mugen 2 in a P55 board, unless it's the Rev.B or something I guess you should be able to. I don't know, test it with prime95 and furmark at a time, if your CPU temps don't get much higher after 5 minutes, just leave it like that

Well, I think I´ll leave it they way it is now. If something with the temp´s won´t be right in the future, I´ll think about this option.