At it again - CPU Cooler trouble (or not?)

[Azunai]

Sooo after a long talk with Puja and Jesung about cooling computers yesterday, and remarking that my PC was rather noisy and dusty, I decided to clean the damn thing today. All went pretty well, removed the CPU cooler and cleaned it out, but found I had no more thermopaste to refresh, and when I tried to put the thing back, I had a problem with one of the pegs, it didn't want to go through the motherboard anymore. I decided to whattheheck buy a new CPU cooler while at it, they're not that expensive.

Got this Coolermaster one, assembled it, put the paste there and put the thing on its socket. And the same thing again: One of the pins (whoever invented this mechanic needs to be shot, very 50/50 if the damn things will fit) that you put the cooler onto the motherboard with was a little too wide so while I did get it in the hole, it's not all the way in. It's stuck though, and not moving, but one of the corners of the cooler may be ever so slightly elevated from the actual CPU. I did whatever I could to get the damn plug to go through the hole, but it won't budge any furhter, while the other 3 are clearly sticking out on the backside.

So I reassembled my case and booted up my PC. It's running alright, but the fan on the CPU cooler is making a ton of noise compared to the old one, right from the moment I boot. I checked my BIOS to see the temperature, Fan speed etc. I'm getting these values:

CPU Temp: 61.5*C, went up to 62 while I was in there.
MB Temp: 30*C

CPU Fan Speed: 2812 RPM
CPU Q-Fan Control: Disabled  <-- It was like that before

I'm running an Intel Core i5 CPU, no overclocking whatsoever. Not sure on the specifics. I felt inside the case to feel temperature but it feels cool enough to my hand in there. I can't hear it spin faster during applications or anything either. Booting up, idle inside Windows or within WoW, all the same but loud.

Are these normal values and is the fan just one of those products labelled 'quiet' but being the exact opposite?
Or is that ever so slightly loose peg causing issues and should I be worried the thing overheats?

[Norv952]

your temps seems too hot for an i5 at idle, you need to reseat the cooler, the intel retention system can be a pita,

the best thing to do is to remove it altogether and reset the pins back to the installation position (assuming the coolermaster uses a similar design to the refference intel cooler you will need to turn them with a screwdriver to unclip it from the board, if so turn them back the opposite way and pull them back upwards into the default position)

lay the pc on its side and make sure all the pegs line up with the holes, sometimes its worth pinching the end of the pegs closed with some pliers but be carefull not to snap them off, then using two thumbs clip two clips in at a time, opposite corners, then the other two, once your fairly sure there in give them an extra hard push as you may hear a second click which is them locking into place

dont worry about pushing too hard, when people I work with have fitted this type of cooler for the first time they almost always fail because they are scared of breaking the board, its tougher than you think and can flex quite a lot, this system needs a hard push to get it to lock on, once fitted it should stay on with out any trouble and you will see a good 15 - 20 deg drop in temps.

Good luck matey

[Azunai]

your temps seems too hot for an i5 at idle

I installed Real Temp, supposedly monitors CPU temps, so that I could see temps outside of BIOS and within Windows 7. All 4 cores are apparently running at 42~ degrees celsius. If I boot a game I see them spike briefly to about ~60 then drop down to 53ish during the game itself. Fan speed isn't going up either by the sound of it. Of course I can't really be sure whether the measurement is accurate...

the best thing to do is to remove it altogether and reset the pins back to the installation position (assuming the coolermaster uses a similar design to the refference intel cooler you will need to turn them with a screwdriver to unclip it from the board, if so turn them back the opposite way and pull them back upwards into the default position)

lay the pc on its side and make sure all the pegs line up with the holes, sometimes its worth pinching the end of the pegs closed with some pliers but be carefull not to snap them off, then using two thumbs clip two clips in at a time, opposite corners, then the other two, once your fairly sure there in give them an extra hard push as you may hear a second click which is them locking into place

dont worry about pushing too hard, when people I work with have fitted this type of cooler for the first time they almost always fail because they are scared of breaking the board, its tougher than you think and can flex quite a lot, this system needs a hard push to get it to lock on, once fitted it should stay on with out any trouble and you will see a good 15 - 20 deg drop in temps.

Good luck matey

I did that, aye. While the ends close up well enough in the pliers, as soon as I remove the pliers the ends widen up again. Pushed with all my might when I tried to get it in. Seems to have worked well enough as temps are ok-ish, but I couldn't for the life of me get the peg to go through :-(

[Norv952]

real temp is as accurate as your going to get without drilling a hole in your cpu, sounds ok now, 53 ish in game is fone nothing to worry about, I wish I could see whats stopping that clip going in, my advice: keep an eye on your temps for a while, if everything seems ok it probably is, 15's are quite robust chips (all intels are) i doubt you will break it, it will shut down if it needs to.

[Azunai]

Yea I was raiding afterwards, temps ran up to 91 degrees in WoW, which isn't exactly heavy duty. So something was definetly wrong. I decided to buy a different cooler as this busted peg was getting me nowhere. Running an Antec 620 H2O water cooling system now, and running at a pleasant 25-30 degrees idle, nice and quiet too :-)

I eh... also found out another reason why it may have been so hot inside: when I opened the case today to put that water cooler in, I found out I had connected the two case fans I have to eachother, instead of one to the other and the other to the PSU (4-pin chain cables). I don't think they were spinning all that much xD