Problems with stock cooler and temperature measurement

[atreidesgoldenpath]

I built my wife a new PC for Christmas. I put a A8-5600K in it. Thought it would be peachy, but I have reapplied the stock cooler 3 times with Thermaltake paste and still having temperature issues.

I read online that people seem to get about 60C tops on this.

I am getting 90C+ in prime95 as read by HWMonitor. My motherboard has an LED readout that is for temperature and it reads about 30-40C less than HWMonitor. AMD Overdrive completely freezes Windows 8 as soon as I launch it every time, so I can't get a readout from that.

Getting some instability as well, it is randomly shutting down. I am assuming maybe it is because I have the MB set to kill the PC at a high temp alarm.

Going to pick up some Arctic Silver and reapply the cooler again. Outside that, any tips?

 

[runs2far]

Post _FULL_ system specs, this will help us identify the problem cause.

Hardware is more trustworthy than software, try touching the cooler, if it is 90C+, you won't be able to keep your finger on it for a second.

EDIT:

Try using different pieces of software, realtemp, speedfan etc. to see if they give other readings.

 

[pgaster]

I second the comments above. Try other software. Core Temp seems OK for me with a Bulldozer cpu. You also might want to check that you have the latest BIOS for the board. Sometimes things like temp sensors get software adjustments and get better over time with BIOS updates.

 

[DPete27]

I had the same problem last night setting up my A8-5600K HTPC. Under Prime95 load, my MSI A75IA-E53 was reporting 60C in BIOS, HWMonitor was reporting 94C, and Coretemp was reporting 47C. I was running the stock cooler with Arctic Silver 5 and the fan wouldn't spin above 2900rpm (since the BIOS thought the CPU was at 60C) so I tend to trust the HWMonitor temps above all others. (especially when CoreTemp dropped to 4C when I stopped Prime95)

Sounds like LegitReviews had the same problem. My next step is to try the newest BIOS revision 1.1 released at the end of December and see if that fixes anything. I'll report back.

 

[pgaster]

Touch the heatsink....carefully. If the temp was really 94C it will burn your finger. Bad.
I doubt HWMonitor is correct at all.
Core Temp sounds a lot more accurate to me.
Newer AMD temp sensors are always wrong for temps at idle though, which is why the Core Temp is wrong there. The only decent temps you can even remotely trust are at load with Core Temp. I have an FX-4100 that also can read 0 to 10 or so at idle so like I said, this is a universal AMD problem right now.