i7 2600K Temps

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PolygonGTC

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I just built a new system with an i7 2600K with a Zalman 9900 Max with AS5. The system board is an Asus P8P67 LE. In the BIOS it says the idle temp is about 38° C. However, if I use IR thermometer aimed at the back of the motherboard, under the CPU and it's about 29° C. How much would you trust the temp reading from the motherboard?

Just seems rather high for such a large cooler.

EDIT: It is not over clocked.
 
PolygonGTC said:
I just built a new system with an i7 2600K with a Zalman 9900 Max with AS5. The system board is an Asus P8P67 LE. In the BIOS it says the idle temp is about 38° C. However, if I use IR thermometer aimed at the back of the motherboard, under the CPU and it's about 29° C. How much would you trust the temp reading from the motherboard?

Just seems rather high for such a large cooler.

EDIT: It is not over clocked.
Click to expand...

use a program that will read all of the individual core's temps to get a better idea, the internal temp diode on the cores is inaccurate esp at low temps so you will often see some cores hotter than others at idle and even full load. Speedfan will show these temps as well as core temp.
 
In the BIOS it will be running at 3.4Ghz with about 1.2v so 38c it great. In Windows it should be about 28c-30c at idle then. Check the temps at idle in Windows and post back. With a temp gun pointed at the back of the mobo should be reading cooler then the chip sensor because of the thickness of the mobo and other factors. I would trust the chip sensor. Most programs will read the core temps and they will be accurate. Many other factors too, like case airflow and also is the Zalman running at 100%? What is your ambient room temps? Let us know all this info
 
The core temp is based on a temperature diode inside the CPU. There's no way a IR thermometer can read the temperature inside the CPU with a heatsink on top. So of course it's going to appear colder.
 
He said he was aiming the temp gun at the back of the mobo so the heatsink isn't an issue but it still isn't going to be accurate from the back or front
 
Use Core Temp or Real Temp from Windows to monitor your CPU temperatures. The BIOS readings are not accurate, nor will be any measurements you take with an IR thermometer, since the temperature at the back of the motherboard or the surface of the heatsink will be much lower than the temperature within the CPU itself.
 
The temperature of the back of the motherboard is useless in terms of the CPU temp. The CPU is in a socket and there is quite an air gap between and you have the core on the other side of the carrier that is in the socket.. It is like taking your internal temperature by measuring the temp on the bottom of your shoe.

You also have to be careful with what program you use for temperature. Some programs read a sensor that seems to be about 10° lower than the core package temp (the board utility program does this for my Gigabyte board) so I have been using HWinfo lately. I was using CPUID HM (Hardware Monitor) but it never read the CPU fan speed correctly. Testing CoreTemp and RealTemp and comparing to HWinfo and CPUID, all 4 programs seem to read the same under load and at idle.

*I'm liking the CoreTemp Gadget..
 
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I know that the IR thermometer isn't going to be accurate for the reasons listed. I didn't know that the sensor was in the processor. Thus I was wondering if the sensor the BIOS was getting it's reading from was accurate or not I just remember a time when the sensor was external and they weren't accurate.

Thus, this thread. Thank you for the clarification.

thenightman4u said:
In the BIOS it will be running at 3.4Ghz with about 1.2v so 38c it great. In Windows it should be about 28c-30c at idle then. Check the temps at idle in Windows and post back. With a temp gun pointed at the back of the mobo should be reading cooler then the chip sensor because of the thickness of the mobo and other factors. I would trust the chip sensor. Most programs will read the core temps and they will be accurate. Many other factors too, like case airflow and also is the Zalman running at 100%? What is your ambient room temps? Let us know all this info
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. After reading your post I looked in the BIOS and oddly enough it's running @ 3.8GHz and I haven't touched any of the BIOS settings on the CPU. I have also disabled Speed Step. I'm assuming that's the reason for the temp drop in Windows.

So, it seems I'm in the clear as far as the temps go.
 
The older systems back in the Athlon days had a thermocouple under the CPU that touched the bottom. Now there are thermocouples everywhere - on the core dies, on the motherboard, in the hard drives - and are much more accurate than the old days.
 
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