Phenom X6 blue screening after cooler upgrade

My Phenom X6 is blue screening almost immediately after logging into Windows. This is after replacing the stock cooler with a Coolermaster 212. (My system was running stably prior to installing the CoolerMaster 212 and has never been overclocked.) The blue screen error messages vary from one blue screen to the next and are not consistent as to error or stop code.

I managed to run Prime95 in Windows safe mode. (More often than not I get blue screens in safe mode too.) The Blend test showed errors on cores 2 - 6 within minutes and were stopped on those cores. I then tried the In-place large FFTs test which almost immediately reported errors on cores 1, 3, 4 and 6 followed by a blue screen.

Ram tests (using Mem86) did not show any errors with RAM. I also tried booting Ubuntu off a flash drive with all hard drives disconnected. I also tried this using an an old graphics card. These combinations all resulted in Ubuntu failing within about 5 minutes.

I unfortunately do not do not have another compatible motherboard to test the CPU on.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Does this sound like a CPU problem or could it be the M/B?

System:
ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ AMD 990X
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600 16GB (4 x 4GB)
Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W

Temperatures?

I would suspect either your cooler is not mounted properly so that the base is not making good contact with the CPU face or the thermal paste isn't spread properly. Take the cooler off and check the spread pattern of the thermal paste on the CPU face. It should be covering most of the CPU face from the center out to the edges.

Sorry, forgot to post temps.

36C at Idle, didn't go higher than 43C running Prime95 (or more to the point, before Prime95 stopped running). I used both speedfan and an IR thermometer to measure he temps.

I took the cooler off and the thermal paste appeared to be smooth even film across the surface of the chip.

use either coretemp or hwmonitor to watch your cpu temps speedfan is way outdated

You didn't put the cooler mount backplate on upside down did you? One side has a clear plastic insulator.

@trents
I put the backplate on correctly. (I don't think it would go on the wrong way, that side has some raised pieces that would hold the plate too far awa from the M/B to attach it.)
And I will double check when I get home.

@wagex:
Thanks. I will upgrade when I get back to having a working system.

What about TIM drooping down over the side and making contact with CPU pins?

Maybe the bolt throughs a have damaged the board around the holes or are shorting out if you don't have the little plastic washers on, doubtfull but worth a look.

So, what happens when the stock cooler is just reinstalled?

@trents - Possible, there is some paste over the edge of the chip, but I don;t see any reaching the pins.

@keny. Yeah I am worried that maybe I did something stupid to the board. Trouble shooting is a pain when you don;t have enough spare pieces to start swapping around.

@BeepBeep2: That is something to try, a real pain to do though as my case does not have a cut out and I need to remove the MB completely.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I don't know how much I will get through tonight. then I am away at a conference until Saturday so won't get back to it until then.

Again thank you to everyone for the suggestions.

Sorry about the delay in posting, I got my computer working before leaving for the conference. I am not sure exactly what solved the problem as I did a couple of things to it at once.

Following @trentss query re thermal goo dripping over the edge of the chip and onto the PINs, I took the CPU out the MB and found some paste over the edge, but not as far as the PINS. I Cleaned it off anyway. I also checked the ASUS site and found they had released a BIOS update within the last 10 days. (I didn't think to do this as I updated a month or so ago). The release notes didn't suggest anything related to my problem, but I grabbed a copy anyway.

Reseated the CPU and CoolerMaster cooler and started up. The BIOS considered this a new CPU and, as I understood it, reset itself. Updated the BIOS and booted into Ubuntu. Worked perfectly, no errors. Downloaded mprime which ran without error.

Booted Win7 ran prime 95 again no CPU problems.

I am very impressed with the new Cooler. I only ran prime95 for a short time - about 15 mins - the CPU temp quickly jumped to 46C and then stabilized at 45-46 depending on fan speed instead of 68 on the stock cooler. (Still using speedfan, sorry @wagex, I was unable to use either of your suggestions due to networking issues) . I bought the cooler mainly for quiet, but do want to look at overclocking for video editing.

Unfortunately the network card is not working under Win7 deleting the network device and reinstalling the driver does not help. It seems to have been caused by a problem with Virtualbox and its virtual networking. Uninstalling Virtualbox did not help so my next stop when I get home is going to be the network section of the Win7 forums.

I've had problems with losing peripheral device function after installing virtual os. Had to reinstall the primary Windows OS.

Yea, that's the problem with virtual machines. I've had the same problem, and only a reinstall worked for me, as well.

I was fortunate, a system restore worked form me, made a bit of a mess of my profile, but seem to have recovered that too.

One thing I could never get back without a reinstall of main OS after uninstalling the virtual machine was optical drive auto load when I inserted a disc.