This can't be for real: - 54C!??!

My computer just crashed (bad RAM) and upon rebooting I'm getting some strange temps from the BIOS monitor.

These temps are usually around 30C, this can't be right...

a phase-change unit doesnt even get temps that low so of course its not right ;]

If they're real you must be freezing your ass off lol .

What motherboard and CPU do you have? I know Intel's Wolfdale (at least, I'm not sure about others) will report their temperature as negative - its an index as to how many more degrees you have until its thermal threshold. -54 means it can raise another 54 degrees before overheating/almost overheating

EDIT: just saw specs in sig: this is (most likely) exactly what is happening.

jack up the voltage for a sec (or switch off a fan) and see if the temp goes up or down.

based on the direction that the number goes, you can determine if it is your correct temperature (just w/ a negative sign in front) or if its an index.

Noticed that you have an EVGA 780i board, I have the same board, and for some reason my cpu temp is totally screwed up in BIOS system monitor too, I've had mine show up as -70C before, reboot and it will be -50C, kinda weird, but realtemp shows idle temps in the mid 30's for me overclocked, so I just ignore the BIOS reading even though that means I can't use the built in thermal fan speed control stuff but oh well.

Interesting to see that someone else has the same issue though, I posted about it on the EVGA forums and one of there techs suggested that it was my heat sink pressing too hard on the chip, but that doesn't really seem possible with the way a Zalman CNPS9500 mount works, especially since the stock intel cooler put so much pressure on the board it was actually warping it. I only had the stock fan on there for two days until I got the right mounting brackets to swap my zalman over from my AM2 board to this board, so I don't really know what the temp said before, but I didn't notice the issue until after I put the Zalman on.

Yeah, I figured it was a fluke with the board. It doesn't do that all the time, usually it gives reasonable numbers (either in BIOS on in RealTemp/CoreTemp). Well I do have the heatsink pretty tight, but its been that way since I set the computer up. Not sure how my RAM burning out could effect how tight the CPU block is. I would test the temperatures now except I had to RMA the memory so the rig is out of commission for the moment. I'm hoping it will be fine once I get it back up and running.

Fluke.