Extreme temp difference idle/load?

[alpinehertz]

Hi all. Just about a year ago I decided to have a budget computer for gaming buying second hand parts. It was a long journey but finally what I have is:
Description of parts on my blog

CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.1GHz 89W
CPU COOLER Noctua NH-C12P
THERMAL PASTE Artic Silver 5
CASE NZXT M59
MOTHERBOARD Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4
RAM 2GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Gold
RAM 1GB Promos DDR2 Pc2-6400
POWER SUPPLY Thermaltake Toughpower Cable Management 850W
GRAPHICS CARD Powercolor ATI Radeon HD4850 512Mb
GRAPHICS CARD COOLER Zalman VF1000

My problem is the load temperature on the CPU. It reaches using OCCT after 10 minutes and measuring with CoreTemp, bloody 94c degrees! Idle temps are about 32c on CoreTemp and on bios the mobo shows 44c. I checked the reading from CoreTemp against the windows program provided by gigabyte and the are very similar, so I think those readings shouldn't be too far from the real ones. By the way my ambience temp is about 22c and right now I'm not doing any overclocking. The mobo is all setup to default.
I thought that the problem was the thermal paste, so I watch all videos on youtube to know how to apply the paste, and finally I got Artic Silver 5 and used the rice grain method.
I did change the fan configuration on the case few times with no luck trying to improve the airflow. If I leave the case open the cpu temperature seems to drop a bit. I was able to play hardcore games without mobo temp alarm in this config. The side fan speed is 900rpm and the back one is 1300rpm stock from NZXT.
I have setup on mobo the cpu temp alarm on 90 degrees. With my old thermal paste I was having sound alarm from mobo after playing hardcore games after 10-20 min. Now I don't get the alarm even thou I reached yesterday 94c degrees on CoreTemp yesterday on full load.
I read almost all reviews about my cooler and I found loads of mix reviews, good and not that good. Overall I think it should do the job, or at least not reach those high temperatures I'm having.
I'm a bit tight on budget so I wouldn't like to change the cooler just for a try to see if it is the problem. The next step I'm about to take is to buy two Yate Loons 140mm fans at 2300rpm for the top of the case, and buy as well a front panel fan controller. That is gonna cost me about £50 and if it doesn't fix the problem then I will need to change the cooler?
What do you think I should do guys?

Noctua NH-C12P

 

[alex24]

Reseat your cooler, there must be a problem with the mounting or thermal interface material. Get it clean with isopropyl alcohol or similar and do it again, more carefully, without lifting the heatsink off and make sure you have enough. AS5 is quite viscous, you'll need to use a little more than usual I've found.

 

[alpinehertz]

Thanks for the reply Ales. After all morning doing research at work I was going to follow your advice and re-mount the cooler with more careful process. I didn't clean the cpu with the right product (just common degreaser from the kitchen cleaning products :S), and I didn't do the thin layer preparation that Artic Cooling suggest to do before putting the rice grain dot in the middle.
But before that I read somewhere that some mobos in the default auto mode to control the vcores they make some mistake. I checked the maximum vcore for my cpu and indeed my cpu was overvolted by 0.5 volts. I didn't know about curing times of thermal pastes, and didn't take much attention to it either.
Also I found that the program from gigabyte easytune6 is the only program that I have that really gives me the same reading as the mobo while I'm in the bios. Even the so called CoreTemp was actually giving me 20 degrees error on the readings.
So my cpu now is on the right voltage, run OCCT for one hour and my cpu maximum temperature is now 59c degrees.
I guess that temperature can even drop a bit more when the 200 hours of curing time is over.
Now I'm gonna mount a spare fan in the front of the case in low speed and I think I will be more than happy with it

 

[arknor]

you could try under volting aswell if your running stock cpu settings
-0.25 could knock a few degrees off and most cpus are fine slightly under volted you can even do it from within windows with easy tune.