Compnut, I wish you better luck than I had. I worked with mine the other day for 2 hours and never did get the thinnest razor blade I could find under the thing. I think some of them must have a thicker coat of RTV holding them on, because mine is exceptionally tight. The little opening they leave where the beads of glue meet is so tight, I can't even get the blade under in that spot and it has no glue at all. I think I've read of three other accounts, besides yours, of people destroying their chips by accidentally cutting the traces. I couldn't afford another one, so I stopped before I caused any damage, although it wasn't from lack of trying. I was pushing pretty doggoned hard on that blade. Got the cuts to prove it.
Back to your original question, I believe the heatspreader holds a lot of heat in until it gets to a certain temp and then let's it go. Mine Idles around 38-40C depending upon the ambient. The ambient is around 75F presently and I'm idling at 100f, even though my board is only reading 78F. Yesterday, the ambient was around 82F and I idled at 104F. But, under full load, the warmest I've seen it was 113F and that was only momentarily. Generally, no matter what the ambient, full load, running Prime 95 torture test along with a couple of other apps is 111F. Seems too hot to me, but I can't seem to crash it, even when I actually go to some trouble trying.
These temps are fairly accurate, because I've checked behind them with an external probe and the differences made sense. I haven't found a software idling program that works with these yet, as a matter of fact, all of the popular ones seem to do just the opposite and push the CPU utilization to 100% according to MBM, however I question that because the temps don't rise, they just don't fall, either.
I'm having to get used to looking down and seeing that 100-104 in MBM. I can stick my 1.1ghz Celeron in the same system and with an idle program, read 87F, where this one reads 100. However, under heavy load, both chips read virtually identical temps. I still think it all has to do with the heatspreader. Since I couldn't get mine off, I checked it to see how flat it was. I really wasn't flat at all, it was raised on all 4 edges and a little in the middle, over the slug. I lapped on it for over an hour, got it perfectly flat and polished it to a mirror finish. It's not silver any longer, but a bright and shiny bronze. Didn't help a bit. Stuck it back in hoping for at least a degree or two improvement, especially since it took a lot less thermal compound to get full coverage, but the temps remained constant.
I plan to order a better heatsink, although the one I'm using is plenty competent to run the 1.1 at 87F. It's a copper cored sink, but it has a round base and doesn't quite cover the entire heatspreader, so I plan to try a copper based one that does. I'm hoping for better results from that, but I really don't expect much improvement based on all the testing I've done.
BTW, I'm not running quite as nicely as you guys, actually haven't tried hitting 133, because of the heat situation. I'm running 1404 at default voltage. When I set her back down to default speed, the temps only go down 1 degree C or less. Actually, its more like 1 degree F, so I don't think my overclocking is having any negative effects on any of this.
If you happen to learn any tips on removing your heatspreader, please post them back here, because I would be very interested in hearing them.
Rick
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