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Did some testing . .

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trents

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
I am suspecting my GA-MA78G-DSH3 (rev. 1) mobo gives artificially high temperature readings under load. What added fuel to this suspicion recently was moving my old X2 cpu and it's cooler over to my wife's computer which has a Foxconn 740G based board. The same CPU and the same cooler gave much lower temps on the Foxconn $39 mobo. So I took my wireless indoor/outdoor wireless thermometer sensor and did some testing on my computer, the one with the Gigabyte board. I positioned the sensor unit variously: 1. in the path of the case exhaust fan outflow, 2. in the path of the psu exhaust fan outflow and 3) in the path of the cpu cooler exhaust fan outflow (I have a push pull fan [2x120x32mm x 2000rpm] setup). All tests were run with the case closed with temps taken at idle and then under full load. Ambient temperature was 20 deg. C. Temp readings were taken before and after running Prime95 for 30 minutes.

System: Medium tower case, 1 hdd, Nvidia 8600GT, 4 gigs of DDR 1066, AMD X3 8750 be cpu OC'd to 3.00 ghz., lapped TRUE, 500W Apevia PSU, 3x120 case ventilation fans (two in bottom, one at top).

Results:
CPU cooler exhaust temp: idle=24-25 deg. C. full load=28 degrees C.

Case exhaust fan temp: idle=24 deg. C. full load=28 deg. C.

PSU exhaust fan temp: idle=25 deg. C. full load=30 deg. C

Wish I had a small temp probe setup that I could have fastened at the base of the cpu cooler but I didn't. That would have told me much more.

Conclusions:
1. Perhaps I can infer that I have good case ventilation with a change of only 4 deg. C between idle and load at case exhaust fan.

2. PSU temp change was 5 deg. C between idle and full load. One of the reasons I was running these tests was to try and get a feel for how taxed my PSU is and if I need more power. Not sure what to conclude here.

3. Though the CPU temp change according to mobo sensor read out was about 32 deg. C (went from 32 deg. C at idle to 64 deg. C at full load) it was only 3 or 4 degrees different at the CUP exhaust fan. I'm not sure how the temp at the cpu socket correlates with air temps coming off the heat exchange surface. Maybe someone can comment on that. My impression however is that the TRUE is doing a good job.

My theory is that this mobo's voltage regulation is flaky as I get wide swings between what I set it to in bios and what shows in hardware monitoring utilities, even at idle. I have this old Ford pickup truck with a marginal voltage regulator. I have noticed that when the voltage meter on the instrument panel is reading high, the gas gauge needle shows more in the tank. Wen the voltage reading is low a few minutes later, the gas gauge needle is showing much less gas. I wonder if the same thing is happening with my computer and its voltage variances/temp readings.
 
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