It turns out that the core of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink are both concave!!
The cpu was cupped bigtime; the edges were raised higher than the core; and the base of the heatsink was cupped slightly, so it compounded the gap between the core and the base of the heatsink.
Alot of sites recommend applying a line of thermal goop down the core of the cpu; or a small blob of cpu goo about (uncooked grain of rice) sized, right in the middle of the core, but I've had best results using the spatula/spreading technique, except this time.. So now I know why they recommend applying a glob in the center for core2's without spreading, the heat spreader is warped up like a taco'd rim.. I tried both methods of the glob in the center technique, both rounds of applications didn't do anything for my temps, I was getting the ocassional game crashing back into windows; hence this thing starting with round 3.. In round three I decided to spread a thin layer across the whole cpu; I'm not a fan of using alot of cpu Goo as it tends to act like an insulator when you get too much on there.. I thought the previous two attempts were hot due to using too much cpu goo... Guess I was wrong... Round three's application got me an actual BSOD
So!! On to round 4... I cleaned off the CPU and heatsink really well, with alcohol and a few tissues.. Taking a look down the top of the cpu while I held my straight edge across the top, holding it up to a light, I could see light shining through some pretty big gaps in the middle and right near the edges, but no gaps at the edges.. Sorry no pics of that... The unflat top really needed lapping!
I'm supprised that intel would let something like this ship! especially considering the price tag, it makes me wonder how many more expensive cpu's are running around out there that need a good lapping.
I gathered up my lapping junk and started working on the heatsink first. Since the mounting tabs hang down past the base of the heatsink, I can't just put the thing on a flat lap and sand away at it.. So I'll be moving the sand paper over the heatsink base, instead of the other way around.. I used a "flat-lapped" celly core as my sand paper backing
So I went on lapping away at the heatsink untill I had scratched up the whole surface, IE, there were no low spots left where sandpaper wasn't touching... "might sound noobish" but I do a pretty good job at lapping....
Moving up to 1000grit and finishing with 2000 grit "you don't really need to go over 800 grit but I have 2000 grit sand paper, so I used it.
Finished off the lapping job by wiping the surface down with some denatured and some lint free tissue's. Cleaned up a little bit and started on the CPU..
I'm including pics of these so you can see how bad it was.. it's not like an old mmx heatsink with the big cut marks n stuff, but it was pretty bad...
If you got high temps on your core2 or quad core; it could be due to the surface not being flat enough to get the heatsink properly interfaced..
Even if you got enough goo in there to close the gap, the goo is only supposed to fill "tiny" voids and surface scratches. Not an entire valley!
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