So I was lucky enough to get a new CPU - yay! Just finished installing it after a few hiccups (BIOS flash and overheating - I had to put the old CPU back in and barely hit it with thermal compound - lazy! - so I started spiking to ~89 C while I was unzipping the new BIOS in OS and then flashing it).

Anyway - I noticed my temperatures hit 60 C when I loaded up Firefox and have been running about 50 C. I think I was getting around 40 - 45 C before.

Is there a chance I did a poor job of applying thermal compound, didn't properly change something in BIOS or failed to click down the fan? Or am I being overly paranoid here and it's just a matter of thermal compound curing?

Also - do I need to do anything else? I loaded my BIOS but didn't change anything after the CPU install. And Windows looked like it loaded some drivers (I haven't booted up Mint yet to get it squared away - I figure I'll probably have questions about that tomorrow unless anyone wants to preempt that now with pointers).

Beyond that is everything all squared away? The CPU was recognized in BIOS and System Properies - am I good to go?

edit: Nothing I should sleep.......

Okay followup.

I'm idling at mid-40s C but I skyrocketed when gaming earlier. As in I hit max 105 C on one core (and for about 10 minutes was at 98 - 100 C) while playing a pretty modest game (Arcania). The computer DIDN'T shut down - in fact the only reason I knew I was running so high was because I quit to check my temps. I was running MSI Afterburner in the tray.

I've removed the fan / heatsink a few times and reapplied thermal compound each time (running low on compound). The CPU is an i5 3570K, not overclocked - I just dropped it in after flashing my BIOS.

Any pointers? Something is clearly wrong and I'm a bit confused as my previous processor didn't have these issues (that I know of) - I was running Arcania a few days ago and I really don't think I would ever have been at these high temps, but I never checked.

Will bump this again tomorrow in the hope of getting it worked out. Stock Intel cooler but again I had an older processor the last time I ran it and Arcania isn't exactly The Witcher 3 - I don't think I should be seeing this kind of temperature spike.

you are killing the cpu with those temps and yes of course the gel has an effect on temp... at this rate, I assume you will need a new system by next week at the out set mate.

how to clean cpu gel

Which cooler are you using? Have you tried using something like CPU-Z to check your CPU is actually at stock? Does the case have airflow problems? Are your motherboard VRMs good?

I'm having same CPU and the temps shouldn't be even close to what you are getting. You might be using too much thermal paste which can have a negative effect on cooling, You should use a software for monitoring fans, temperature etc and then run like Prime95 for stability tests.

If you still got problems you might need to get a new CPU cooler, sounds like you were using a stock cooler and they are usually not very good.

Could be a cooling issue, also check the voltages because it sounds like your cpu recieves too much sparks.

Any possibility that you're running at decent temps but having it reported incorrectly? You updated the BIOS and one would think that matter would be addressed in the update, but...

Another thing that could be happening is some idiotic auto-overclock options that some motherboards have. They are usually called turbo-boost or something similar. If you have them, switch it off. If you want to overclock, do it manually.

Okay great pointers I'm actually free today so I'm going to try out some of this stuff.

What should be my stock BIOS voltage settings? Is this something I can just do a search for or does anyone here have any idea where I should be?

I like the idea of checking the heatsink for high temps - hadn't thought of that.

Also, when I flashed the BIOS, I didn't get the "newest" one - I grabbed the first one that had support for the CPU I was using (my thought being it should be "closest" to my existing BIOS and least likely to change too much). If I can't seem to solve this should I flash a newer one?

Also, I had a heatsink / fan fail on me before - the little plastic pins broke after I reapplied thermal compound - just like now. Bad headsink contact was my first thought here but it seems to be flush to the CPU / Mobo and "clicked in" on all four corners. Are there less obvious ways it can fail to make contact? Honestly this was my first thought about what could be wrong.

What type of thermal compound did you use. Normally it's hard to do things wrong...

Maybe, tell us all the specs of pc, (psu+motherboard+...) so e can help better...

I used poly-silver thermal - I've applied it before and had good results.

Speccs are an OEM P8H61-M (I think Pro) Asus motherboard and a CX 600 PSU. The previous processor was an i5 2310 and everything was fine.

The fans sound a bit louder / stressed (though I could just be paying too much attention). In a little bit I'm going to load up Arcania with the case open and see if the heatsink is very hot.

And I checked my voltage on the CPU - looks okay. I don't remember exactly but I think it was at 1.02 V or some such. How do I disable Turbo - I didn't see the option in BIOS.

My CPU is currently at 32° and it's damn hot here.. something is very wrong with your setup.
What cooler are you using? Check if you mounted it properly.
And did you remember to clean the previous compound? Btw, I usually just apply a "pea" of it in the center of the CPU.
What are the temps of the rest of the hardware? Check if all the vents are working correctly.