Scientific and Debian are back online with much more reasonable core temperatures (they were running 200+ degress). The main issue was CPU voltage. “Auto” on Asus defaulted to 1.38v which was way too high. CPU is stable at 1.05v and MUCH cooler.

Physical id 0:  +95.0°F  (high = +176.0°F, crit = +208.4°F)
Core 0:         +95.0°F  (high = +176.0°F, crit = +208.4°F)
Core 1:         +89.6°F  (high = +176.0°F, crit = +208.4°F)
Core 2:         +86.0°F  (high = +176.0°F, crit = +208.4°F)
Core 3:         +87.8°F  (high = +176.0°F, crit = +208.4°F)