CPU about to vaporize !!

One fine day, I suddenly felt the urge to OC my CPU for no apparent reason. I had not looked at the temps since a long time, so I just checked the temps before OC'ing, just to get the feel how worse it could get when I actually OC.

I happen to own a powerhouse CPU (~100W), the infamous Pentium D 820. On top of that, I still use the stock cooling, and the room temperature is around ~30 degree Celsius, making board ambient temp~50. I have not even OC'd the chip.
When I run my experimental DES cracker on this dual core boiler-plate, this is what happens - CPU temperature is 84 degrees. The fun part is that this is not the accurate temperature as Intel did some cheap cost-cutting. Some say that the actual could be higher by 10 degrees than what's reported.



Then I realized that I had not cleaned the box for quite some time. I took it apart and get the reason -- ~2mm thick dust layer on the heat sink baffles.


The sad part is that the thermal paste has disappeared and I can no longer get it for free. So the worst case temps are still around 75-80. Hope things will improve when I apply it.

The spurious OC (s)urge went down as fast as it rose.