Phenom 955 high temps at stock

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I'm using a phenom 955 with a Noctua 12cm cooler (the upright one) and am getting 40C at idle and around 50C at load. This seems pretty high, especially since I'm running the top and back exhaust fans in my Antec, as well as the optional drive bay fan. There is no problem with airflow, so I'm wondering if I put the heatsink on wrong.

I just put a rice grain sized dab of AS5 on the heatspreader and then screwed the heatsink in. Could the AS5 not have spread properly? I cleaned the heatsink surface with the AS cleaning solution, but I didn't clean the chip since it didn't have any compound on it.

What's the safety temperature for Phenoms?
 
I didn't put the stock cooler on because it has a small fan and I want a quiet system, but it does look much more heavy-duty than the old ones. Maybe i'll swap out the noctua for the stock fan if it's still hot after I reseat it.

Is the stock cooler very noisy? And do you have the new lower power 965?
 
I usually put a small dab of thermal compound on the chip and then use a card to evenly spread it into a thin coating on the surface of the chip. This'll ensure there's a good contact between the chip & heatsink on all the available area.

If you just put a dab and then clamp the heatsink on it, I think you'll only have a fraction of the chip surface in good thermal contact with the heat sink.

I just put a rice grain sized dab of AS5 on the heatspreader and then screwed the heatsink in. Could the AS5 not have spread properly? I cleaned the heatsink surface with the AS cleaning solution, but I didn't clean the chip since it didn't have any compound on it.
 
stock cooler is probably loudest part in my machine, I gave up running my case fans quite after I put it in, it just over powered them :) I have the older less efficient 140W version
 
I usually put a small dab of thermal compound on the chip and then use a card to evenly spread it into a thin coating on the surface of the chip. This'll ensure there's a good contact between the chip & heatsink on all the available area.

If you just put a dab and then clamp the heatsink on it, I think you'll only have a fraction of the chip surface in good thermal contact with the heat sink.

Yeah, that always seemed strange to me. I just followed the Arctic Silver instructions. I'll try and spread it out when I reseat the cooler.
 
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