Accurate CPU temperatures?

[Below_Cost]

So I have finaly decided to bite the bullet and dive into the world of overclocking. I put my system together about a month or so ago and the bug has bitten me.

My system specs are posted below in my Sig

I just ordered a Thermalright ULTRA-120 Extreme (from the Sponsored Deals post no less) but started doing a bit of overclocking with the stock Intel heatsink/fan.

I'm running Prime95 to test temps under load and Core Temp for the temps. For fun I ran SpeedFan as well as the ASUS AI Suite just to compare the temps. First thing I noticed was the large gap between AI Suite, SpeedFan and Core temp.

Below are screenshots of the three seperate programs. Please bear in mind I have not adjusted fan speeds at this point, I just was curious about this before I went further.


Core Temp on Idle = 51°, 50°, 48°,49°


SpeedFan on Idle (CPU) = 41°


ASUS AI Suite on Idle= 41°

Sooo... what one is more accurate? Considering it is a 3000MHz overclock on a stock heatsink/fan, what temperatures would be the most accurate?

Thanks for the help in advance guys. :help:

[magictorch]

stick with coretemp as this uses the more reliable estimate of each cores temp -you can always calibrate speedfan by another 15oc if you like using that.

Anyway you cant oc a quad on a stock cooler safely. But given your at 3ghz and just over safe temps (65oc) you'll probably hit 3.4 with the TUX heatsink. Use orthos for stability testing as well prime 95...need to run it for around 8-24hours.

[MpG]

Hah, with those clocks, I was about to say that Speedfan was right, until I caught the words "stock heatsink". Speedfan does an excellent job of reporting temperatures - BUT you have to give it that 15 degree offset. So that chip was running at over 70 degrees - tell 'em to hurry up with that cooler!

And wow, I've never seen a Q6600 with all four cores the same temp...

[Cptn Vortex]

I have noticed that the latest version of Speedfan I got reports the same temps as the latest beta of Coretemp. They are also the same temps HWMonitor reports to, leading me to believe them. I really like HWMonitor, as it shows current temps, but also max reported temps. A great little feature!

[Mr. Cipher]

There is confusion because some of the intel CPU's have their temperatures calculated with an offset from 85c, and others with an offset from 100c, to determine when to shut down. People are still arguing about whether or not the 15c offset should be made, so accurate temperature is hard to get in some cases. (google anything on intel core temps, tjunction, or tjunction max and you'll find the discussions).

Like they said, coretemp appears to be much more reliable and I would stick with that reading, if for no other reason than to be safe. Good OC!

[Below_Cost]

The Thermalright ULTRA-120 Extreme came in last week and I finally got around to installing it and trying to clean up some of the cables on the weekend.

Quite the temp difference with from stock, I was impressed


Core Temp on Idle = 32°, 32°, 30°, 29°

Now to see what I can get this puppy up too....

[Krixxer]

i oc'd using speedfan 4.33
Q6600@3.4 using 1.2V
using the ultra 120 and OCCT for stability

temps start to spike when i'm over 1.25V under full load for more the an hour

one thing that i may add is to stay away form the asus Ai suit I never had any satisfaction or confidence using their software cpu up.
IIRC AsusAi had my Vcore up to 1.4v when i set it to 3.4

[Below_Cost]

Krixxer,

Thanks for the numbers, gives me a ballpark where I can overclock too. As for ASUS AI Suite I try avoid it as well, in this case i quickly installed it to check the temps to compare to the others.

What kind of setup do you have (mobo, ram etc)?

[Krixxer]

I'm not the guy who should be giving any advice as there are guys much more qualified then me around here.

I have a maximus with q6600 GO 3.4 @ 1.2V and balistix 8500 4-4-12 @974 using 2V


I took mine to 3.0 @ 1.3V from the very start and fine tuned from that point. this was my first OC attempt and it took me around a week of work to understand how things work and to find that 95% max performance happy place.