I'm putting together three systems, all exactly the same. Here are the relevant specs:

i7-2600K @ 3.4GHz

Zalman CNPS9500 AT heat sink and fan with Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste

Asus P8Z68-V Pro

16GB DDR3-1866 1.5v (running at 1600 currently, because that's what the motherboard defaults to)

1000W Cooler Master PSU

120GB SSD hard drive

DVD Drive

On initial start up of the first system I went into the BIOS and it showed CPU temp at 50C. That seemed way high to me for an idle temp, but I've never built a system with this CPU before so I googled what others were getting. The norm seems to be around 25-30C at idle.

So, it seems that I'm running awfully hot. I reseated the heat sink several times and can't get any better than this.

So, I put together the second system thinking that possibly there was something wrong and I get the exact same temperatures.

When I touch the heat pipes on the heat sink, right at the base near the top of the CPU, it feels like room temp.

I'm wondering if either this motherboard doesn't read temperature correctly, or if perhaps when I'm in the BIOS it's not idle, and thus the higher temps.

The bios is verion 0501.

Any ideas?