High temp readings on a i5-2500k.

[Atli]

Hey all!

I just finished putting together a PC running a Intel i5-2500k CPU on a MSI board, just using the heat-sink that came with it. Installation went fine; everything popped into place as expected. Haven't even attempted to overclock it yet.

However, using the MSI Core Center app to monitor the CPU temp, I get two conflicting readings when putting the CPU under stress. In a part labeled "Green Power", a "CPU Temperature" is reporting well over 100°C (highest I saw so far was 115°C) while another part showing the OC details for each core shows temperatures for each core well withing normal. (Never seen a core go over 50°C)

Reading about the CPU on Intel's site, I see they put 95°C as Max TDP. The little I know about this subjects seems to indicate this is a "total" value for all four cores (or rather; some external sensor reading the overall temp of the chip), which is what my high reading is also referring to. Which would mean there is something off with my heat-sink... right?

What would you all advice me to do? My current thinking is to just go pick up some "proper" heat-sink and replace the one I currently have. I know I can't just pop it off and try to put it on again, as that would probably ruin the cooling gel. (Perhaps that's what happened? An air bubble got in the gel when I applied it.)

Thanks!

P.S.
Attached an image of what I'm talking about. It's not ridiculously high in that snapshot, but you get what I'm talking about.

 

[EarthDog]

I would advise you to use Realtemp or Coretemp instead and see what they report and post back...

 

[Atli]

Ok, thanks. I tried Core Temp and it reports nothing abnormal. Running all four cores at a 100% load for a while, none of them goes far beyond 70°C. (Except for random 1 second jumps to 98°C, which I figure is more likely to be a software issue.)

MSI Control Center, on the other hand, still reports that stupidly high CPU Temp. I aborted my test once it reached 110°C, which is way way to high. It has to be some bug in the software, right? Shouldn't the system have shut down already - or melted - if that was accurate?

I misunderstood/misread the Intel website earlier, by the way. The 95°C max I was talking about was actually 95W, referring to some completely unrelated measurement. The only temp value there is 72°C, which makes more sense when looking at the core temps.

Anyhow, I'll attach a snapshot from just before I aborted my test.

 

[Janus67]

I would trust more by CoreTemp/RealTemp than the MSI control center software. If your chip hits 100C (or even 98C or close to it) it will either severely throttle the chip or just completely turn off the computer in order to prevent damage to itself.

That said, with your coretemp temps it seems about right in line with a stock 2500k under full load with a stock cooler. If you plan to do any real overclocking (more than 4ghz I would say) I would check into grabbing a decent heatsink+fan combo, the Hyper 212+ is a forum-favorite here for its price/performance ratio around $25.

 

[Atli]

Ok, thanks guys. I'll just ignore MSI Control Center for now. I've tried to find whatever sensor is giving of that reading, but it seem that wherever that number is coming from, nothing else can see it.


Speaking of defective MSI software... In an attempt to fix whatever bug was causing this, I updated the drivers that came with the motherboard, which promptly crashed Windows, leaving me unable to log in without receiving a seemingly random BSOD.