13600K reaches 100C° during gaming. Can't figure out why.

Definitely sounds like a mounting issue to me, only way temps would get so out of control so fast. Double-check you're mounting it properly, and with enough pressure (but obviously don't go crazy with it).

Double check your mount. Uneven amounts of torque on the screws could cause insufficient pressure over certain parts of the processor. If I remember correctly, the new 13th gens are a bit bigger than previous, so even mounting pressure might even be more of an issue.

This, or maybe you forgot to remove the sticker on the bottom. Happens to the best of us.

Did you remove the plastic on the cooler?

Thank you guys for all the helpful advice. Most of you seem to suspect a contact problem between the cooler and the CPU, so I'll definitely double-check that first.

In case I can't find anything wrong with the cooler, I was wondering about the default voltage and if the MSI bios perhaps goes overboard with it, given that its dynamic. But it seems far-fetched. What would even be the typical voltage of 13600K under load? CPU-Z indicated that it was above 1.4v while gaming. Is that too much?

Edit: Progress report

CPU cooler: So, I double-checked everything and the mounting seems fine. I've followed the process as shown here by be quiet! themselves and it sits nice and tight on the CPU and I think I've used an appropriate amount of thermal paste both times (made sure my X looked just like the X in one of the tutorial videos. Also its not the first time I've installed a CPU cooler and the temps were always good in the past). I am also positive that I removed the plastic sticker.

Case heat build-up: However, since last time I reported, I noticed that there was just an excessive amount of heat trapped around the CPU area of the case when I stuck my hand in there. I thought maybe the problem isn't so much that the heat isn't pulled out of the CPU by the cooler, but that its not pushed out of the case afterwards.

So I started thoroughly vacuuming my case and removed a lot of dust that had accumulated in and around the case fans. I've also set up manual fan curves with Fan Control and discovered that some of the case fans never went above 60% of their speed, so I corrected that. Additionally, I noticed that when running something like Cyberpunk, the 3080 pushes a lot of its heat out sideways, so I've gone ahead and just removed the dust filter in the side-panel of the case so it can be pushed out easier.

Testing: All in all, these measures seem to have made a noticeable difference, with temps during Cyberpunk now hovering around 80C° whereas before they were at least 10C° hotter (both stock bios settings). There's also no more heat build-up, which I'm quite happy with.

With Prime95, temps are still 90ish+C°, but I've noticed that the CPU pulls 190-200 Watts during the whole run, so I can kind of understand where the heat is coming from.

For everyday usage, I guess temps are fine-ish now, but I'll probably go ahead and either undervolt the CPU to something like 1.3v or limit the max wattage to perhaps 100W. Both seem to reduce heat dramatically while running stable and without affecting performance much.

Still not sure if the temps are completely normal, but at least its not a critical problem anymore.

Make sure you removed the plastic off the cooler. Sounds obvious but it’s a common mistake

Not normal.

Make sure both of your fans are actually mounted the correct direction.

Make sure there is good contact between the cooler and the CPU IHS

Make sure the fan cables are plugged into CPU_FAN and not SYS_FAN. You should also be able to set the CPU_FAN curve in the BIOS.

Check all that and report back.

For reference, my 12700, when it sustains 155W during benchmarks, peaks around 90 C

When it is at 100C, is the fan just spinning or is it going full bore?

Do you use a fan curve, if so, just set it to 100% al the time to see if this improves the CPU temps.

Do you have an extra fan you can point at it to see if this lowers your temps?

If no improvement on all of the above then your cooler is not getting the correct contact to the CPU to remove the heat.

You can try pushing the cooler down on to the CPU during testing to see if this give an improvement. (Watch out that you don’t burn yourself

As other have pointed out, sounds like a contact issue. Assuming nothing is wrong with the CPU cooler and the way you mounted the device, you might want to consider an aftermarket CPU Contact Frame for the LGA 1700.

What AIO are you using and did you use the right standoffs for the mount on the cpu. The 1700 lga standoffs are a just a bit shorter then the other lga size (can’t remember lga 1100???, you know what mean) anyway the wrong size posts could cause your issue. Also take this in the correct way, but you can go heavy with the paste. I do t mean so much as it squirts out but you can put a good coating on it. I use an applicator to smooth over the entire cpu with a thing coating.