Accurate CPU temp monitor?

Hi.

Up until today I've always considered CoreTemp to be the most accurate for
reading my E4500's currently) temperature. It agrees with Intel's
TAT on temps across the range from idle to 100% load, give or take a degree.

However, while working on a mate's Phenom I downloaded CPUID's HWMonitor to
check his temps. I've just run it on my machine. It's reporting core temps
~15°C *higher* than I previously thought I had. Slightly disconcerting.

CT 43°, TAT 42°, HWM 58° at 100% load. Tt Mini-Typhoon lapped and CPU IHS
lapped. AS5. *Extremely* well ventilated case, ambient 15°C. (Yeah, I'm
cold!) While those temps are fine, when summer comes to these parts the
ambient can rise another 20°C on a hot day reaching mid 30's at times.

So, what's the consensus? Have others noticed this discrepancy? What utility
are you inclined to believe?

Thanks.
--
Shaun.

I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I used to
get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz, of about 18 deg
C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with an X48 board, I now see
approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Hi.

Up until today I've always considered CoreTemp to be the most accurate for
reading my E4500's currently) temperature. It agrees with Intel's
TAT on temps across the range from idle to 100% load, give or take a
degree.

However, while working on a mate's Phenom I downloaded CPUID's HWMonitor
to check his temps. I've just run it on my machine. It's reporting core
temps ~15°C *higher* than I previously thought I had. Slightly
disconcerting.

CT 43°, TAT 42°, HWM 58° at 100% load. Tt Mini-Typhoon lapped and CPU IHS
lapped. AS5. *Extremely* well ventilated case, ambient 15°C. (Yeah, I'm
cold!) While those temps are fine, when summer comes to these parts the
ambient can rise another 20°C on a hot day reaching mid 30's at times.

So, what's the consensus? Have others noticed this discrepancy? What
utility are you inclined to believe?

Thanks.
--
Shaun.

Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz,
of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with
an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)
--
Shaun.

"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Hi.

Up until today I've always considered CoreTemp to be the most
accurate for reading my E4500's currently) temperature. It
agrees with Intel's TAT on temps across the range from idle to 100%
load, give or take a degree.

However, while working on a mate's Phenom I downloaded CPUID's
HWMonitor to check his temps. I've just run it on my machine. It's
reporting core temps ~15°C *higher* than I previously thought I had.
Slightly disconcerting.

CT 43°, TAT 42°, HWM 58° at 100% load. Tt Mini-Typhoon lapped and
CPU IHS lapped. AS5. *Extremely* well ventilated case, ambient 15°C.
(Yeah, I'm cold!) While those temps are fine, when summer comes to
these parts the ambient can rise another 20°C on a hot day reaching
mid 30's at times. So, what's the consensus? Have others noticed this
discrepancy? What
utility are you inclined to believe?

Thanks.
--
Shaun.

"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz,
of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with
an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)
--
Shaun.


I have been using CoreTemp too Shaun and I went from an E6600 to a Q6600 and
using the same water cooling system temps at 3.2ghz on the Q6600 read a good
15+degs higher than the E6600. My bios on this Striker Extreme reads
27-29degs idle and CoreTemp is giving me 40-43degs across the 4 cores. The
bios readings 'should' be about right with my current setup and are about
where my E6600 idled at. I don't know of any temp app that I can trust to be
accurate anymore.


Ed

On Tue, 6 May 2008 11:53:32 -0500, "Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz,
of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with
an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)
--
Shaun.


I have been using CoreTemp too Shaun and I went from an E6600 to a Q6600 and
using the same water cooling system temps at 3.2ghz on the Q6600 read a good
15+degs higher than the E6600. My bios on this Striker Extreme reads
27-29degs idle and CoreTemp is giving me 40-43degs across the 4 cores. The
bios readings 'should' be about right with my current setup and are about
where my E6600 idled at. I don't know of any temp app that I can trust to be
accurate anymore.


Ed

I'm using the Asus probe II, which is probably not very accurate, but
it gives me similar numbers. Case ambient (one of the sensors included
with the MB) is 27, MB temp is 35-37 under almost any conditions, and
the Q6600 is 27 under no-load and as high as 42 running Prime95 on all
four cores, but usually under 37.

On the other hand, I've gone rather extreme on cooling since I decided
to stay with air cooled. The case is a Thermaltake Armor full tower
with 3x14cm, 1x25cm, and 2x(80 or 90) cm fans. The MB is a Striker
Extreme with the thermal pipes and massive radiators, and the CPU
cooler is the Zalman (sp?) 9500. The fans are currently all running at
high and it's almost unnoticeably quite, so I haven't bothered with
fan speed control.

Jim

If your Q6600 is a G0 stepping, your current version of coretemp is
assuming the wrong Tjunction max.

Make sure you have the latest version of coretemp, which accounts for
the new higher Tjunction max. your readings should then be correct.

Tjunction max for E6600 = 85C
" " Q6600 (GO stepping) = 105C
" " " (B3 stepping) = 85C

That's why your current readings are ~20C off.

On Tue, 6 May 2008 11:53:32 -0500, "Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz,
of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with
an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)
--
Shaun.


I have been using CoreTemp too Shaun and I went from an E6600 to a Q6600 and
using the same water cooling system temps at 3.2ghz on the Q6600 read a good
15+degs higher than the E6600. My bios on this Striker Extreme reads
27-29degs idle and CoreTemp is giving me 40-43degs across the 4 cores. The
bios readings 'should' be about right with my current setup and are about
where my E6600 idled at. I don't know of any temp app that I can trust to be
accurate anymore.


Ed

Somewhere on teh intarweb "Ed Medlin" typed:
"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600 @3GHz,
of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board, but with
an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)

I have been using CoreTemp too Shaun and I went from an E6600 to a
Q6600 and using the same water cooling system temps at 3.2ghz on the
Q6600 read a good 15+degs higher than the E6600. My bios on this
Striker Extreme reads 27-29degs idle and CoreTemp is giving me
40-43degs across the 4 cores. The bios readings 'should' be about
right with my current setup and are about where my E6600 idled at. I
don't know of any temp app that I can trust to be accurate anymore.

Thanks for that Ed. I do know that CoreTemp (and TAT) reads higher for quads
as I've built a machine on a similar board to mine with a similar cooler for
a mate, only using a Q6600 and the temps at idle were ~15° higher too. I
just figured it was due to there being twice the number of cores requiring
twice the energy in a similarly sized package and figured CoreTemp was about
right.

I guess I'll just make sure everything is cooled as well as I can and rely
on Intel's thermal safeguards when summer comes back to these parts.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

Somewhere on teh intarweb " typed:
On Tue, 6 May 2008 11:53:32 -0500, "Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarweb "John Whitworth" typed:
I don't think any one of them can be considered truly accurate. I
used to get ridiculously low temps using CoreTemp on my E6600
@3GHz, of about 18 deg C on each core. That was on MSI 975X board,
but with an X48 board, I now see approx 50 deg C at the same speed.

Thanks for the reply John, point taken. :-)

I have been using CoreTemp too Shaun and I went from an E6600 to a
Q6600 and using the same water cooling system temps at 3.2ghz on the
Q6600 read a good 15+degs higher than the E6600. My bios on this
Striker Extreme reads 27-29degs idle and CoreTemp is giving me
40-43degs across the 4 cores. The bios readings 'should' be about
right with my current setup and are about where my E6600 idled at. I
don't know of any temp app that I can trust to be accurate anymore.

I'm using the Asus probe II, which is probably not very accurate, but
it gives me similar numbers. Case ambient (one of the sensors included
with the MB) is 27, MB temp is 35-37 under almost any conditions, and
the Q6600 is 27 under no-load and as high as 42 running Prime95 on all
four cores, but usually under 37.

I'm not that keen on Asus Probe II. I've used checks download location 9
different BIOS's with this mobo as updates have come out since I got it and
there have been some *huge* changes at times with AP II's readings after a
BIOS upgrade. There is obviously an offset built into the BIOS and I assume
that they're getting more accurate with each BIOS release but you can never
be sure....

On the other hand, I've gone rather extreme on cooling since I decided
to stay with air cooled. The case is a Thermaltake Armor full tower
with 3x14cm, 1x25cm, and 2x(80 or 90) cm fans. The MB is a Striker
Extreme with the thermal pipes and massive radiators, and the CPU
cooler is the Zalman (sp?) 9500. The fans are currently all running at
high and it's almost unnoticeably quite, so I haven't bothered with
fan speed control.

My case is similarly cooled with 1x25cm and 3x12cm case fans. AP II gives me
24°C for "MB" which I figure has to be northbridge as a thermocouple put
into the case reads around ambient +2°C and the "MB" temp climbs rapidly
when Prime95 is started. (Ambient's currently 19°, it's a balmy autumn day.)

Thanks for the replies to this query. I guess the upshot of it is, as Ed
said, there isn't a definitive temp app for Core CPUs. Up until recently I
assumed that TAT was that app (which largely agrees wth CT which runs nicely
minimised in my systray..) but it would seem that it's not the case.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.