Is this normal? CPU temp fluxuations

[rival]

System is a p4 3.0c w/ ic7-g mobo...i installed a thermalright slk-900U heatsink w/ 90mm fan due to my idle temp being ~63C (was using a retail intel hsf combo)
after booting w/ the new heatsink, i had temps of 52-58c..i thought that would be okay and everything was normal, after about 10 minutes of my pc being on, im getting temps of 29-32C, a significant drop...when i reboot from then and enter my bios as soon as i can, i get temps of 53-55C via the abit bios

im using motherboard monitor and winbond hardware doctor to check the temps..

are these reading accurate? is 30C the actual temp of my pc after being on for a few mins? am i safe?

edit: hehe, so when i run mbm5 and winbond together, i read the really low temps, but when only one is running i see 55+c temps...i guess this is as low as i can go?

 

[hjo3]

Well, it's possible that if you're using an OS like Win 2000, and since you don't have a VIA chipset, then the OS is prolly sending halt commands to the CPU when the system's idle (which is more often than you might think). While in the BIOS, this doesn't happen; the CPU is basically processing a max. capacity.

Then again, who knows... maybe MBM and 'winbond' just work together weird. I dunno.

55 C+?! That is hot. Highest my AMD proc ever gets is 41 C... You're overclocking...?

 

[rival]

Originally posted by: hjo3
I dunno. 55 C+?! That is hot. Highest my AMD proc ever gets is 41 C... You're overclocking...?

nope, thats completly idle, after sitting all night im getting temps of 48c

basically now mbm5 shows 30c, and winbond hardware doctor shows me 48-52c

which is real?

 

[hjo3]

My guess would be the higher temp. I mean, it must be coming from somewhere, right? I assume the program isn't just making it up... you might try using something like a CompuNurse probe to measure temp. if you want to be sure.