pre-overclocked CPU running rather hot

[GfB]

My PC, which is now about 5 years old, has an Intel i7 950 CPU which came pre-overclocked, as part of a bundle with a Gigabyte X58-USB3 motherboard.

I'm no 'overclocking aficionado', so I've barely touched the settings. However I've noticed that my CPU is running rather hot under high usage, even after cleaning the dust out of the heatsink. When I run certain demanding applications, the temperate regularly goes >80 degrees C under high CPU usage, and if I run a stress-test application like LinX it hits >90 degrees C, which I know is bad.

I noticed that in my BIOS "Advanced Voltage Settings", my "CPU Vcore" was set to 1.4V. I've done some googling and although I understand that vcore has to be increased to achieve higher overclocking settings, this figure seems rather high, and presumably explains the high temperatures under stress.

Below are my settings according to the BIOS:

Defaults (when not-overclocked):
. Stock speed = 3.07 GHz
. CPU Vcore = 1.1625 V (in Advance Voltage Settings / under "Normal" column)

Current settings as reported on "M.I.T." (MB Intelligent Tweaker) main page:

. Speed ~ 3829 MHz
. BCLK = 174 MHz
. Memory frequency ~ 1392.5 MHz
. Vcore = 1.376 V
. DRAM voltage = 1.648 V

"M.I.T. Current Status" section of BIOS:

. QPI Frequency ~ 6266 MHz
. UnCore Frequency ~ 3481 MHz

Advanced Frequency Settings

. CPU Clock Ratio = 22 X
. (CPU Frequency 174x22 = 3.82GHz)
. BLCK = 174 MHz
. System Memory Multiplier (SPD) = 8.0

. CPU Clock Drive = 800mV
. PIC Express Clock Drive = 900mV

CPU-Z - CPU info reported by CPU-Z under Windows 10:

. Core Voltage = 1.376 V

. Clocks (Core #0):
. Core Speed ~ 3827 MHz
. Bus Speed ~ 174 MHz

1. Do any of these settings seem bad?
2. Is it possible/likely that the suppliers of my motherboard/CPU bundle were 'lazy' in setting up the overclock? E.g. is it plausible that they set the CPU Vcore unnecessarily high to save testing time?
3. Note that the Vcore reported by CPU-Z is lower than the value actually specified in "Advanced Voltage Settings". Why might this be? Is this not unusual?
4. Is it likely my CPU really does need close to 1.4V due to the fairly aggressive overclock?
5. Is it likely the only way of taming the temperature will be to reduce the Vcore/overclock, and/or buy better cooling?

My CPU is air-cooled but it's not a stock Intel cooler - I bought a decent after-market cooler and followed the instructions carefully when applying the thermal paste. I did some googling on this and perhaps it would be worth re-applying the thermal paste / re-installing the heatsink, but I don't know how much difference this makes.

Sorry if some of these are 'noob' questions. All input/suggestions gratefully received!

 

[Hagar]

The VID rating is 0.8 to 1.375V for thAt CPU. My limited experience with the earlier i7's was that the higher voltages were required to support the virtual cores when overclocking. Turning the CPU into an i5 equivalent was a lot easier to do.

So the volts are not too aggressive, are likely required IMO. They may be dropped a little, but only trial and error will prove that.

You could try 23x 166MHz which would likely put your ram at stock and would use the stock multi for the CPU but give the same overclock on it. See what temps that gives you and whether you can drop the volts a notch or two