Well, that explains a lot.

[makken]

Was just about to post a thread here about my cpu behaving erratically when i glanced over at my box and noticed that my heatsink looked a bit off from the top vent.

Opened up the case and sure enough one of the plastic pins had popped off. Turns out it was throttling itself because there was absolutely zero contact between it and the heatsink.

What was weird is that it was throttling itself to -30 tjmax (70 C) so when I was monitoring the temps, it didn't look like it was overheating. I run mid to high 60's at full load so it didn't look that far off from normal operation @ load.

PSA: don't buy heatsinks with those stupid plastic pushpins.

 

[JasonCoder]

At least yours throttled itself. Mine just craters. I'm not a fan of the plastic dealies either.

 

[VirtualLarry]

was this the stock heatsink, or a 3rd-party one?

 

[toyota]

never had problem with them. I was nervous when I built my first pc 3 years ago because some people said how much trouble those push pins were. they popped right in for me and never an issue doing it since either.

 

[yottabit]

What was weird is that it was throttling itself to -30 tjmax (70 C) so when I was monitoring the temps, it didn't look like it was overheating. I run mid to high 60's at full load so it didn't look that far off from normal operation @ load.

Are you sure the 70 C wasn't the actual CPU temperature? The ceiling on that is much lower than the reading from the individual cores, which is what tjmax refers to I believe

 

[makken]

was this the stock heatsink, or a 3rd-party one?

Its a coolermaster hyper 101

Are you sure the 70 C wasn't the actual CPU temperature? The ceiling on that is much lower than the reading from the individual cores, which is what tjmax refers to I believe

it was the core temps according to speedfan; all 4 cores were between 68 and 70

 

[KingstonU]

Had the exact same thing happen to me before. I now find that I need to actually take the motherboard right out of the case to make sure that the push pins are properly locked it, just pushing on them while the board is in the case is not good enough (unless your case has proper cut-outs that give you good access). Thankfully you probably didn't damage anything.

 

[pcgeek11]

IF they properly pressed through as they should be they will not come loose.

 

[ITXGamer]

I always install the heatsink before the board goes into the case. Sometimes those plastic pins look like they're pushed all the way in but they aren't locked. It can take a good bit of pressure to snap them into place.

Pull on the heatsink firmly to ensure that it is locked to the board.