What is a normal/safe temperature for an i7 2600K CPU?

Question

I just completed my first build, and while I was finagling around in the BIOS I noticed, with some concern, that my CPU was sitting around 60 °C. Even when I set the maximum temperature to 55 °C, it didn't seem capable of going below 58 °C. Judging by the various threads I've found (for example) this is a little absurdly high for an idle temperature. I'm using the stock fan, by the way, which seems to go up only to 2000 rpm.

1. So ought I be concerned? I haven't installed the operating system yet, so I don't know how the temperature would change if I put some strain on it. But frankly I don't want to risk putting strain on it at this point.

2. What is the best way to get my CPU to chill out? I'm thinking I'll be investing in an aftermarket CPU fan at this point, so what should I do? Also advice on efficient airflow, etc. would be great.

My specifications:

• Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge
• Asus P8P67 Deluxe LGA 1155
• SuperClocked GeForce GTX 570
• G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB)
• Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500 GB internal hard drive
• COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 800 W
• COOLER MASTER 690 (it's got room for three more fans, if that helps)

Answer 1

From looking up some stats on Sandy Bridge CPU temperatures it seems your 60 degrees Celcius is indeed quite high.

Should you be worried? Well not if it stays at 60 degrees Celcius, so I recommend you do a stress test like Super Pi or Prime95 and keep an eye out what this does to the temperature.

Looking at some overclocking temperatures from Overclockers.com it seems they made it run at 4.3 GHz at 75 degrees Celcius. That would indicate that you still have some headroom while staying within safe temperature ranges.

From the forum you linked they mention:

If it were a problem, your CPU would be throttling down. Intel set the Thermal Throttling at 95-98 °C, which means the degradation limit is far beyond that or else it would just shut off rather than throttle itself.

The Anandtech forums suggest that it could be that your cooler isn't aligned correctly, so I suggest you take off the cooler and put it back in its place, to see if it helps. Another point they mentioned is that you might want to check for newer BIOS versions.

Furthermore, to help troubleshooting, I recommend you add a picture of your case + cooler, so we have an idea about the airflow in the case. Based on that we can figure out what might be the problem.

Based on what I've found so far, you don't need anything other than the stock cooler, though with your model, you'd be crazy not to overclock it to at least 4.3 GHz. Still, that should be capable with the stock cooler, we just need to figure out what is causing these high temperature readings.

To add some proof of my own:

Note that I'm using water cooling, so my idle temperatures are normally around 30 degrees Celcius. Clearly yours are a bit high, but certainly not too high.