• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Temp Assistance

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

DigitalMonk

Registered
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Looking for a little advice on temps...

System is:
Gigabyte 7VAX MB
AMD 1700+ (1.4Ghz) - No OC
1GB PC2700 RAM
Radeon 9600XT 128MB

I play a lot of Battlefield: Vietnam and noticed this past weekend that after playing for a couple of hours straight my CPU temp was maxing at 145 F with a system temp of 115 F under load. Those temps are from MBM.

Went out yesterday and picked up a Thermaltake Silent Boost and it seems to be helping the CPU situation, as after an hour of gaming last night the CPU maxed at 115 F. However, the system temp is still hanging around 115 F. In fact, it seems the CPU temp is usually around 10 F less than the system temp when idle. For example, this morning the CPU was 96 F idle but the system was 109 F idle.

Currently, I have an intake fan in the side panel and 2 exhaust fans in the back, in addition to the 2 fans on my PSU (bottom & back). My case has room or 2 or 4 intake fans on the front but way back when I tried running 2 intake fans and it didn't seem to make a difference.

At this point I'm wondering if a blow hole with either an 80mm or a 120mm exhaust fan would be the most helpful?

Any advice you guys have is appreciated. Am I needlessly worrying about the system temp in the first place?
 
What is your room temperature? Those readings don't make any sense. Are you sure MBM is reading the correct sensor? Perhaps the two are reversed.
 
That was my thinking too but I just confirmed that in BIOS the CPU temp is 37 C/98 F and the system temp is 43 C/109 F. That's with the machine idle.

As far as room temperature...ranges between 75-80 F.
 
where do ya find these temps? i been lookn all over tryn to find out what temps im at . even sisoft's sandra dosent tell me the temps after the burn cycles. please point me in the right direction
 
What you should do is to download MBM5 LINK and pick out your mobo from the list. It'll give you your cpu and either case or mobo temps.

What cooling do you have in your case? If you only have the HSF, then your case probably could get the 43°C.... although you'd have to have a lot of heat producing hardware and no fans I would think. Adding a blowhole usually helps quite a bit, as well as removing the case fan grills.

Would both of you guys mind putting your temps (cpu idle and load, case, and room temp) and system into your signatures? Just go the quick links at the top of the page and select edit signature. Once we know your systems and temps, we'll be able to give more specific advice. Thanks and Welcome to the Forums, guys :)
 
Cooling for me right now is a side intake fan and two back exhaust fans.

Could the system temp being reported by the chipset temp?

BTW, I get "Your signature can not be longer than 0 characters." when trying to save my signature.
 
I am not familiar with the motherboard you have, but the system temperature sensor may be located very near by either your northbridge or your video card. Both could get hot enough to throw off the temperature reading. You might see where it is placed, but it still doesn't make sense that your CPU could be cooler than the system as a whole using air cooling.

Did you just start noticing this, or has it always done that? The temperature sensor might be shot. If you have a small room thermometer, try closing it inside your case for a few minutes and see what kind of temperature it reads.
 
Maybe you have to be a member rather than a new member to have a signature... in which case you get your first star at like 10 posts so you don't have very far to go.

Well, your case temp sensor could be located near something that's producing heat, which skews the reading, or your BIOS could be off... in which case the manu. usually fixes the problem with their newest BIOS flashes. Is your board flashed to the newest BIOS? An easy way to check if your temp is off is to take a thermometer if you have one and stick it in the case for like 20 minutes and check if the temps match.
 
I'm definitely thinking that the sensor might have died. I'm not sure how you kill a thermistor, but I guess it's possible.
 
I moved a couple of months ago but all of this started happening in the past couple weeks and in that sense nothing has changed. The location of the PC in the house, etc. has stayed the same since the initial move.

Stupid question...

when you say thermometer do you mean a digital one or will a standard stick one do?
 
Thanks guys. I'll monitor the idle temp for 30 minutes tonight when I get home and post the results...
 
Haven't had a chance to test with the thermometer yet but after the PC had been idling all day I shut it down and took the case off and physically touched every major heat source (video card, CPU, HDs, chipset fan) and none of them were hot to the touch.

The CPU idles around 95F so I'm happy there but the case was showing an idle temp of 103-105F.

Given that none of the hardware actually felt hot I'm wondering if the idea of the sensor going bad isn't the cause of all of this.

I'll do the thermometer test in the next day or to and that should help...
 
BTW, I get "Your signature can not be longer than 0 characters." when trying to save my signature.

It's not working properly at the moment..I tried to edit my sig. yesterday and this morning to no avail..:( Guess I need to report the problem..:)


**UPDATE--: See thread.. :thup:

SIG. PROBLEMS
 
Last edited:
An update...I still haven't done the thermometer yet but I got a few minutes to tie up my cables and open a bit more direct path to the CPU and MB for the side window intake fan I have.

It seems to have helped a little, the system idle temp now hangs around 104F instead of 110-115F. However, it's still higher than my CPU, which is 95-97F idle.

So, I'm wondering if getting a better side window fan will help the airflow even more and hopefully get things down a bit more on the system temp.

So, I'm looking for recommendations on a good, quiet window fan that looks somewhat decent since it's going to be in a window but might get me even a bit more cool.

Thanks!
 
As the table shows, the higher your case temp (and fan inlet temp), the hotter the CPU temp. It's no wonder that many are finding fresh air ducts to be a very effective solution at lowering CPU temps. Effective CPU cooling requires BOTH a good heatsink and airflow through the case.

To test out how much case temp impacts your system, open the side of the case, aim a house fan at the motherboard and record temps under stress. This is "best case" for airflow through the case.

SOURCE LINK

Try running with the side off and fan blowing in..:)
 
May try that over the weekend arch. I'm been letting the machine set all day and I'm fairly convinced the new idle temps are 95F CPU / 104F system as reported by the BIOS AND MBM. That's an improvement over what I was originally getting.

I replaced my stock AMD HSF with a TT Silent Booster and it extends a lot closer to my northbridge fan. I have a Gigabyte GA-7VAX and I'm wondering if the "system" temp sensor is between the CPU and the NB. If so, the bigger HSF may be extending over it and be contributing to a false reading that is higher than the actual temp simply because of the location of the sensor.

When re-routing the cables I immediately touched all of the major components after shutting down and none of them were hot to the touch which makes me think more and more it's simply a false reading.
 
Back