A few Asus P2B questions

Recently, I got an old system that has an Asus P2B Revision 1.04 in it. I have a few questions that I have not been able to solve.

1) Does the motherboard have any temperature monitor for the CPU? Because the BIOS displays the System temperature but says the CPU temperature is not available.

2) In the Device Manager dialog of the Control Panel, under System Devices, Advanced Power Management support has an exclamation point next to it. The Device Status says This device is either not present, not working properly, or does not have all the drivers installed. (Code 10). But when I press the Update Driver button, Windows says the best driver is already installed.

cpu temps on asus boards

i have read practically all there is to read about my asus p3b-f mobo. if you are running a pentium III which has an on die thermal sensor, the motherboard gets it's cpu temps from it. if you install asus probe wich came with your mobo on cd rom, you can monitor cpu and memory and board temps, as well as all the different voltages, and find out anything you want to know about your system.

i don't know if your board is older or newer than mine. mine is 1999 vintage, so if yours is that old or newer chances are the things mentioned above are true for your mobo. mine was the first mobo to implement bios options for overclocking made by asus, which by the way makes the best boards on the market even today. mine has the old bx chipset.

i am pretty sure all pentium chips have an on die thermal sensor, if not there should be one just beneath the chip itself, and it should have a dab of thermal grease on it, and it MUST touch the processor to work. remove the chip if you have the expertise and look underneath. you will see a component that might be blue in color with two metal leads sticking up inside the area where the processor was. it sould have thermal grease on it, if not put some on it. then bend it carefully upwards until it raises the chip slightly above being flush with it's socket. then push it down a hair and put the processor back in place. make certain to put thermal grease (arctic silver is best) between the chip and it's heatsink, then install it and a good fan. that should clear up your problem if you are running an amd chip, or an intel chip that does not have an internal sensor. the external sensor types are not as accurate as the on die type are, so you can expect to see a deviation of as much as 15 degrees F more than it actually reads.
the device manager will not make any difference in this situation. it cannot control the temperature sensor. the fact that it is telling you the device isnt working or that you cannot update the driver is eroneous data and should be ignored.
i hope this answers your questions, and solves your problem, wisdom.

I have an older P2B-F. I don't think there's support (I also am not aware of the existence of) for any on-die thermal sensor on the chip. There is a 2-pin header for the attachment of a thermal probe, there are actually 2 of these headers on my -f. I use one for the CPU and one for the GPU. You'll have to buy a thermal sensor and mount it near the CPU die, if you want the sensor. The machine will run just fine without this.

I believe XP Advanced Power Mangement is a little beyond this board, and no update is gonna change that (as far as I know). Again, this won't keep your machine from running fine, albeit rather slowly.

I've been running the p2b-f with a sloket for almost 2 years with no problems. cel566@950. Was never able to get temps through the on-die. Got a thermister from radio shack and put a sensor together from details from oc homepage. Plugged it into the onboard pins and it took. Had to compensate. Used an infrared sensor I use at work to get the temp at the position of the sensor as best I could. mbm is used. sloket says it will support the chip sensor but no go. It's the best I could do and it's worked fine for me.

Alright, thanks everyone

I have a P2 333 mhz in the system right now BTW. And I've read around some places saying that the P2B has very spotty support for Advanced Power Management, so I shouldn't worry about that either.

Glad there's some people that can still help with an old board like this

these folks are indeed correct. if your board doesn't support the on die like mine does, one can be added. it must come in direct contact with the die (preferably underneath and in the center of it)
you could get extravagant like one of the responses above and use an infrared thermal sensor wich can take temperature readings acurately without coming in contact with the die at all. you would have to mount this type of censor so that it is pointed at the chip, again preferably at the center, but in this case top or bottom. they are also correct in stating that it is not necessary to have this temp. sensor, but it can come in handy in preventing a meltdown of your chip should your cpu fan fail. do some research into these options. i have also seen instructions on websites on how to build a circuit that will turn the computer off if the fan fails, this would be a great alternative to the sensor. if your heavily overclocking you definately need to monitor your temps until you are comfortable with them enough to leave your computer on all the time and not have to worry about a meltdown. my board will reset the computer if it gets over a "threshold" temperature and will reboot into bios in safe mode, thus protecting the chip in an overheat situation. many of the boards built around the time mine was (1999) or newer have these features built into the bios for your protection. i advise you to go to asustek.com and download the manual for your board if you do not have the original, and read it cover to cover, it will be of great help to you in your quest to know cpu temps. and what capabilities are built into your bios. you can also get bios updates from this site, if you have the original mobo cd it has AFLASH on it
(this is the utility you need to flash or update your bios). if you don't have the cd, this program and how to use it are also on this site. if you encounter a problem when flashing your bios, DO NOT turn your machine off. if you have read the instructions you will have made a bootable floppy with both the new bios and the old. if the new doesnt take press escape key and flash with the original bios from the disk you made.

it is entirely possible that a bios update is available and it may support the on die temp sensor. like i said, do some research, if you jump into these things without knowing exactly what you are doing you will end up with a non bootable machine or a burned up chip. the best resources you can find are on asus's website, you may also wish to visit a site called "ocinside.de/index_e.html?" to simplify things just go to ocinside.com. take a look around here as this is the site (i am pretty sure) that tells you how to make the circuit to shut your puter down if the fan fails. another good site is tomshardware.com.

i hope this all helps, if you have any more questions about this i will be happy to help, as i am sure will the others who've responded to your query.

good luck, wisdom.