Q6600 G0 runs extremely hot @stock

[christophocles]

I have a Q6600 G0 stepping and it runs extremely hot all of the time. At stock clocks and the lowest possible volts my MB will allow (1.125v), this thing IDLES at 55*C and with Prime95 Small FFTs on all 4 cores it goes up past 80*C! With everything in the MB set to Auto and with SpeedStep turned on, the thing is sitting here running at 1.6Ghz, 1.032v, idling at 47*C (hottest core in realtemp).

Also there is about a 10*C difference between Cores 1&2 and cores 3&4 when under load. I have tried both a Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme and a Scythe Ninja cooler, and I have reseated them both many times with Arctic Silver 5 with the same results. I put in a Xeon3060 (e6600) with the Scythe cooler just as a quick test and it idled around 28*C with 50*C max temp running Small FFTs.

Do I just have an extremely bad Q6600 G0? I've read on here that 3.6ghz overclock @1.4vcore is with a 55*C load temp is common. I can't even reach those kinds of temps with stock settings. I have not tried lapping the CPU because I am hesitant to void the warranty, but I still don't think that would help with my exceedingly high temperatures at low vcore. Funny thing is, I tried overclocking a bit and it seemed like it wanted to. I reached 3.0+ at maybe 1.15v and the only thing holding me back was the scary temperature. I've never had a problem with it crashing on me under any conditions, even running prime95 @80+ degrees C (which I turned off immediately).

My room isn't too crazily hot, either. I keep the A/C running so it's probably in the high 20's. I love this noisy beast other than the fact that I can't overclock it AT ALL. I'm thinking I should just sell this proc. and buy a Q9450 or a used Q6600 that I KNOW will run properly, but I'm holding out to see if there is any hope for this one.

Could it be a faulty temp. sensor reading high all the time? Has anyone else experienced this?

My specs:
C2Q Q6600 G0 @ 2.4ghz
8gb G.Skill RAM
ASUS P5W64 WS Pro
ATI Radeon HD4850 512MB
Westinghouse 37w3se 1080p 37" LCD
6x 1TB Seagate 7200.11 32mb cache
Areca ARC-1220 SATA-II RAID Controller
-300GB RAID-0 Volume (OS)
-3.7TB RAID-6 Volume (Data)
Zippy Emacs 850w PSU

[crosshairs]

Those temps do seem very high...seeing as how you have tried different coolers and reseated a few times, I really have no advice.
You may be able to RMA it due to it running so hot under load.

[Loser777]

Make sure you have all of the pushpins COMPLETELY locked down and the paste is spread evenly. If you do, then RMA it.

[fatguy1992]

I had this prob when I first got my Q6600, turns out I had too much thermalpaste on. My idle temps were 60C+ . Also like Loser777 said check the push pins are in correctly.

[christophocles]

Make sure you have all of the pushpins COMPLETELY locked down and the paste is spread evenly. If you do, then RMA it.

Well at first I was using the Thermalright Ultra 120, which is kinda foolproof. You just put the backplate on and screw the heatsink clips in until they stop. The Scythe uses the same clippy things as the stock cooler, and the last couple of times I checked the underside of the board and made sure the pins were going through all the way. I also varied the amount of thermal paste each time.. I've never put this much effort into seating a heatsink and had this big of a problem. I usually just set it once and it works and I forget about it. Like I said in my original post, I tried the E6600 one time and got decent temperatures right off the bat. So I'm pretty certain now that it's the CPU's fault.

What I'm REALLY wondering now is, what if I was using the plain old stock cooler on this cpu?? Ultra120 gives 15-20*C temp reduction over the stock cooler in my experience, so if I was using stock, I'd be running 70*C at idle?? That's insane. This processor is defective and it's endangering my motherboard and other components. I'm gonna RMA it first thing on Monday.

Thanks for helping to convince me I have a bad processor. Now let's hope Intel doesn't give me any crap about wanting a new one...

[Loser777]

I think you have a legitimate reason... Also, make sure your BIOS settings are right, like it's not running at 1.55v for some reason.

[Omastar]

Thanks for helping to convince me I have a bad processor. Now let's hope Intel doesn't give me any crap about wanting a new one...

Intel is generally pretty lenient on RMAs. As long as there's no physical damage to the CPU (done by you), they'll exchange it for a new one.

[Loser777]

That makes me feel worse about my chip... L737B pack date 2/26/08. I hope it's not a heavily degraded one that managed to run at stock that got RMA'd.