New Q9450 running hot

[zircon]

I picked up a new Q9450 at Micro Center the other day and had it installed by them. After some BIOS trouble (had to be flashed/reset and updated) they got it in. In their air-conditioned labs, the avg. temperature per core (idle in Windows) was about 50c. Now, at home, with a hotter room (~75f ambient temperature at most) the cores are idling at 58-61c. Under load, a bit higher.

This is really worrisome. My old E6600 had idle temps of no more than 40c and 50c under load would worry me. It sometimes idled as low as 30c. My airflow here is slightly worse (vent in left side of the computer is about 4 inches from a wall, but nothing I can do about that) but otherwise the only difference is the processor. I had the tech guy use arctic silver coolant and my Zalman Icetank heatsink/cooler.

Should I be concerned? I've read that Q9450s are supposed to be quite a bit cooler than this.

EDIT: Worth noting, these temperatures were reported with the "CoreTemp" utility. "Real Temp 2.60", which I just downloaded, is reporting current temps of 49-52, which is a fairly big difference, but I don't know which one is more accurate.

[kitty]

Core Temp reads directly from the processors themselves using Intel's Digital Thermal Sensors located in each core. Real Temp uses something they call "Fluke 62 IR Thermometer," whatever that is. I'd say Core Temp is much more accurate, especially since your processors will be adjusting their performance based on what's in the DTS.

I'm running a Core 2 Duo in my system and my idle temps increased by 10 celsius in my room at home as opposed to my old dorm room at college.

[zircon]

Other people have told me CoreTemp doesn't read quads accurately. If CoreTemp was accurate, while playing TF2 I hit 75c on one core. That seems insanely high, no?

Anyway... this is still a concern to me. Also, the performance increase I gained was a little less significant than I thought.

[kitty]

Well, in either case, I think your temperatures are running too high for idling. What kind of CPU fan/heatsink do you have?

The big factor for my jump in idle temps is the airflow at the back of my case. I used to have the left vent in the case completely blocked but the back completely open. Now I have the left vent open and the back with less than a foot of space from the wall.

[Dhsu]

Anyway... this is still a concern to me. Also, the performance increase I gained was a little less significant than I thought.

The obvious solution is to overclock.

[Effef]

The thermal sensors in the 45nm quads and dual cores are broken shit. They don't measure right, and the 50C you are getting is actually about 30-35C.

Intel was notified of this, and their response was basically "LOL OOPS".

So you have nothing to worry about, you'll know if it hits its thermal ceiling.