Something weird with my cpu temps...

[arhines]

I've been running my two durons for about three weeks now, and I have finally concluded that something strange must be going on with my thermal diodes. At first, I was using some big old taisol aluminum sinks with deltas, and those (although really noisy) kept the cpus at 40-42 degrees. Ambient temps were around 25 at this time, as it was fairly warm out. No lower than 40 though. Then, I got a pair of ax-7s with vantec stealth 80mm fans (27cfm, 21dba), and got similar results. Around 40, sometimes up to about 44, but not much higher or lower than that. When the hot weather kicked in, I was seeing ambient temps of around 30-31 inside, and cpu temps went up accordingly. Mind you, this is seattle, and 31 degrees is reeeeeeally hot for us. I switched the vantec stealths with my sunon case fans, hoping that that would help the cpus out a bit. No such luck - I saw a few degrees drop in load temp, but idle didn't go down a bit. Still seeing 40-46 whereas 30 degree ambients gave my vantecs 40-48. This morning, it got cold all of a sudden, and ambient is 20 degrees. One would think that with ambient temps 10 degrees lower, cpu temps would drop accordingly...but again, no such luck. They are holding steady at 40 degrees. I haven't tried loading them yet, but will do so soon. Any ideas? Minimum measured temp on the boards thermal monitering system?
hmm!

[KaHNZa]

That is really odd.... I think what I would do is pick up a thermal probe of some kind and put that up against the core. THen I would know for sure.

[arhines]

Thats what I'm thinking. only problem is that with my two huge ax-7s, not exactly easy to get anything in there :)
One thing i have noticed - with a 10 degree ambient drop, my chipset temps do drop ten degrees, and that has a heatsink and a fan on it...and loaded, my cpus are not getting any warmer. What I'm thinking is: Because the motherboard thermal diode is behind the cpu, the air back there is going to be at least 40C regardless of how cold the cpu core is, because nothing is reducing temps back there. Only on top. I will try the thermal probe idea though.

[arhines]

Well, I couldn't get the probe too close to the core, but it is near it, making good contact with the copper baseplate. Idle temps of 38, loaded 38.7. Still slightly weird, but I can live with it, as long as they are safe temps. Hmm...order some faster fans for some oc'ing fun? I'm at dual 1300s@1430 at the moment, had it posting at 1504, but I think i need a voltage bump to load windows at that speed. Hoping for 1550 with adequate voltage bumpage :)
Once 1500 starts to seem slow, ill look into getting some real mp chips...hopefully tbred 2500+'es by that time heh