Temperature Monitoring program Accuracy

[Jack19262]

Just wondered if anyone here knew which temperature monitoring programs were very very accurate, Im using two, The Nvidia System monitor and Realtemp 2.70 yet both give me different readings.

at Idle the Nvidia System monitor tells me my cores.. in order are 49, 46, 44, 46

Realtemp 2.70... 33, 31, 29, 31

As much as i would like them to be the Realtemp 2.70 temps, somethings tells me that one of these programs is lying or is using misled information. I know both sets of temps are fine for my q6600, Especially since its Oc'd to 3.00ghz (still get crappy fps)

Could someone enlighten me here please?

Thanks

[bgets]

You may want to try a program called Speedfan. I am sure you can do a google search and find it. Seems to work fine for me.
Bob G.
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

[noell]

In addition to RealTemp, there's a bunch of third party temp monitoring software available.
A few:
MotherBoardMonitor http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Motherboard-Monitor.shtml
Speedfan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
CoreTemp http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/
Intel TAT (Thermal Analysis Tool) http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138139-intel-tat.html

My experience with these programs is that they ALL report the wrong temps.
If I run any of these programs, I see my core temps only a very few degrees above ambient. How can that be?
For example, my ambient temp right now is 23 (degrees C) and CoreTemp and Intel TAT show my cores at 24/26 and 25/28 respectively.
As nice as that would be, there is just no way a chip can run and be that cool (at least when cooled with "normal"/"non-exotic" cooling systems).

If I check the temp reported in the BIOS, I see my cores at about 40 degrees and if I run PCProbe (that's the Asus system monitoring utility), it reports within a degree or two of what I see in the BIOS.
To me, that is much more believable so I use PCProbe.

My suggestion: Check what your BIOS is reporting and choose a monitoring utility that shows the same or close to the same temps you see there.
If you have an Asus motherboard, you will find PCProbe on the motherboard support CD or you can download it from Asus' website.

....Noell

[Paxx]

I have found with Intel quad core processors that if you add 15C to the reported core temp you come up with a pretty accurate reading. This applies to SpeedFan and CoreTemp, the two I use most frequently. SpeedFan can be tuned to take this into account. I think differing readings have to do with the relationship of the chip probe, the motherboard, the chipset drivers and whichever app you are using to monitor the heat.

[angels355]

These would come in handy, I was "firing up" a p4 3 ghz socket 775 chip today, wasn't sure what was functioning or not. I was getting I think 88 to 93 deg C and 190 to 199 deg F. I know they run HOT, however are they actually THAT hot?? I was ready to roast some weenies and marshmellows! I've bookmarked this page in fire fox 2 for future reference, I hope that works on this forum.

[cianpars]

I've used several including speedfan and am sceptical about the temps they report. Running several at the same time do seem to report different temperatures.

What they are useful for though is monitoring load affects. i.e. see how much of a rise you get when running something system hungry like FS against idle and using the internet etc.

In my experience you get to know when your temps are too high because you get problems. Chips nowadays tend to stop and cause a reboot when they get to high and you get all sorts of problems with videocards if they get too hot.

I've never come accross an overheating hard drive though.

Some people have had their systems wrecked by meltdowns so high temps can do realy bad things but I would still rather rely on instinct (and extra cooling) than temperature monitors.

IAN

[angels355]

I've used several including speedfan and am sceptical about the temps they report. Running several at the same time do seem to report different temperatures.

What they are useful for though is monitoring load affects. i.e. see how much of a rise you get when running something system hungry like FS against idle and using the internet etc.

In my experience you get to know when your temps are too high because you get problems. Chips nowadays tend to stop and cause a reboot when they get to high and you get all sorts of problems with videocards if they get too hot.

I've never come accross an overheating hard drive though.

Some people have had their systems wrecked by meltdowns so high temps can do realy bad things but I would still rather rely on instinct (and extra cooling) than temperature monitors.

IAN

I get a lot of my hardware used, so I see used hardware in good and bad condition. Overheating hard drives is an issue even at humble levels; if I'm experiencing overheating of hdd's that's at the humble level as my hardware is mostly not cutting edge. I have a 20 gb Maxtor that gets hot, it is functioning fine however I think I'm going to have to put a fan in front of it. There was one person who seemed to have no lack of $$, he decked out his office computer like a game machine, I wonder if he'd play his favorite game between appointments. Any way, he had two sata hdd's and each sat in it's own aluminum finned cooling apparatus that had two small fans in front of the fins on each side. A bigger fan in front of the hdd might work OK also. However, in my opinion the fan motor should be some distance away from the hdd because fan motors contain a magnet, and magnets destroy data. I should know, my claim to fame at Digital Equipment Corporation was to use a strong electro-magnet to erase reels of data tape during the four months or so of my illustrious career there. They would rotate their backup files.

But as I was saying about overheating hdd's, not many have complained about them on this forum, however as I receive old hdd's, there are a significant number of them that either failed or were on the verge of failure due to overheating. One that frustrates me is that, got a newish Maxtor IDE hdd out of a newish emachine, the hdd is around 120 or more gb's. The Seatools analysis software says that it had experienced overheating issues. The previous owner was a very casual computer user, just checked his email and surfed the web for short amounts of time. His computer was only perhaps two years or less old, his emachine Bestec psu blew out, which then fried the motherboard, and during ordinary light use his hdd was failing due to overheating. So overheating even on a humble computer is an issue in my opinion.