Had been getting a little nervous watching the CPU temp rise during those long rendering sessions, so I decided to change my heatsink compound.
I switched from plain white silicon heatsink to the silver thermal compound, and lo and behold my CPU temperature dropped 5 deg Celsius during renders! That's 9 deg F.
For anyone deciding to do this, be careful unlatching the fan spring, clean both surfaces carefully with denatured alcohol on a clean cloth or q-tip, and apply a very THIN layer of thermal compound.
I switched from plain white silicon heatsink to the silver thermal compound, and lo and behold my CPU temperature dropped 5 deg Celsius during renders! That's 9 deg F.
For anyone deciding to do this, be careful unlatching the fan spring, clean both surfaces carefully with denatured alcohol on a clean cloth or q-tip, and apply a very THIN layer of thermal compound.