Intel i7-8700K CPU Majorly Overheating + Causing Stuttering/Mini Freezes

[SpyderTracks]

Also, I apologise for going off-topic, but I've been visiting this forum on & off since I first purchased a machine from PCS 4+ years ago. Every time I've ever had a problem that I couldn't fix on my own, I could pretty much always depend on you to have the answer to my tech issues. Just wanted to give a massive thanks for your help over the years!

Aw, thank you very much, that’s really kind of you to say, and very much appreciated.

It really is a pleasure. I’m a man of few words and tend to get straight to the point, but I and all the others on here really do get an awful lot of satisfaction from getting people the best experience they can have.

We’re all likeminded people looking for that tech goodness, it’s nice to be able to help out where possible

 

[DarkPaladin]

I figured I'd make an update to the thread since I fixed my overheating issue.

I received the Grizzly Kyronaut Thermal Paste in the mail today, so I quickly went to work on my laptop.

1. I took off all the screws in reverse order from 9 to 1
2. Removed the CPU from its metal contraption
3. Cleaned the fans out with compressed air in short bursts
4. Cleaned the CPU, GPU, and heatsink contact points extremely carefully with Arctic Thermal Remover with cotton buds
5. Applied Arctic Thermal Purifier to both the CPU, GPU, and heatsink contact points
6. Applied the thermal paste to both the CPU and GPU using the Cross/"X" method
7. Inserted the screws in the correct order from 1 to 9
8. Opened HWMonitor and Speccy and immediately noticed the idle temps decreased from 50 to 30-40 degrees
9. Stress tested the CPU for 30+ mins using Intel XTU, with the highest temp recorded at its peak being 80 with an average of 63 degrees at 100% usage
10. Success!

It looks like my overheating problem was related to either the previous thermal paste application (most likely culprit) and/or the heatsink being mounted incorrectly. So hopefully anyone having similar issues reads this post and considers trying this as well!

I wanted to thank everyone here for the good advice (yet again), eliminating the need to RMA my laptop over the Christmas holidays.

Unfortunately, my laptop is still having random mini-freezes that lasts anywhere between 1-5 seconds. I'll create a separate thread for that since the main issue of overheating has been solved.