CPU Temp question

I'm sure this has been asked a thousand times here, but I need to know about CPU temps and what to fixate on. I have 4 temp monitors on my CPU and I need to know which is the best to rely on and what is the highest temp. I should accept on the best monitor. The monitors are as follows:
1) ASUS Utility 2.19.07 Temp Probe - 28 C
2) Areogate II probe shoved into the heatsink center - 41.5 C
3) Thermaltake Xaser III "Skull" case monitor taped directly onto the bottom of the CPU - 55 C
4) BIOS hardware monitor - 57 C

the CPU itself is a Barton 3000, 166 FSB OC'd to 200x11.5 (I know, ignore the specs below).

The main reason I ask is because the wife was b****ing about the fan noise (It was loud, admittedly, but it didn't bother me) so I put a low noise and lower cfm fan in the case and now I am concerned about temps since I don't have the 5500 rpm, 44 db. fan drawing air across the CPU

i wouldn't let your CPU get to far over 50'c then your still safe


i could send you my 92mm tornado run that for a week and she would be beggin for the old fan back lol

You are safe as long as your CPU doesn't get past mid 60's... even past that you are probably safe.

All you have to worry about is that your stable through the 50C reported temp range - the largeness of the numbers are not important, it is the stability relative to the numbers that is important. If you can remain stable at that overclock through the 50C or even 60C range then your actual CPU temperature is probably not that high or you would get errors.

Remember to only monitor one program at a time, as they can interfer with eachother's reading.

I appreciate the info. guys, I guess I didn't frame my basic question very well though. So I'll ask it again, which of the 4 listed temp. gauges is the one I should be watching to make sure I don't go to high into the 60's range?

I would imagine that the highest one probably reads form the onboard diode, and is likely to be the most accurate. Try installing mbm5 and seein if you can get it to read the temp.