Power / Aux Temperature ??

[ACCORD MAN]

Setup :
AMD 3000+ (939) --not OCed--
Giga K8NF-9
512 x 2 (OCZ)
WD 120G (ATA)
WD 160G (SATA)
SLK2650bqe (using included PS)
Basic Stock cooling, which means 1 rear case fan (included with case).

Here's what Sandra gives me.. I know Sandra isnt very popular on this forum, but SpeedFan and similar utilities, give me identical results.

Temperature Sensor(s)
Board Temperature : 25.0°C / 77.0°F
CPU Temperature : 24.0°C / 75.2°F
Power / Aux Temperature : 69.0°C / 156.2°F


1st I'm unable to find what "Power / Aux Temperature" is ? I've scoured the help files and various boards.. Cant be the power supply?!

2nd Next to that item, there is a warning sign.. So should I be worried?!


Thanks guys!

 

[montag451]

If you open the case - look at all the fans connectors - Where there are 3 wires, one of them is a temperature reader wire - that is where the aux temp reading is coming from.
If you still aren't sure, unplug them one by one to see which one stops reading out. [BUT NOT THE CPU FAN, ok?]

Also, it could just be the ambient case temp readout, possibly taking the reading from the mobo sw

 

[FlyingPenguin]

The monitor software you're using is mis-labeling the temp sensors. More than likely Power/Aux is your CPU temp (in which case it's VERY high - I don't like to see a CPU running over 60C).

HOWEVER I would have my doubts about the accuracy of that sensor since the case temps are very low. If you can touch the heatsink without burning your skin, there;s no way that CPU is running at 69 C.

You probably have two case temp sensors and that would be the 25 C and 24 C readings (notice they're slightly above ambient room temperature).

You're better off downloading the motherboard monitor utility from the motherboard manufacturer - Gigabyte does have one for most of their mobos. It should be more reliable.

Keep in mind that CPU temp sensors aren't very accurate. Use the temps as a RELATIVE guide, but the actual temp might be much different.

 

[Navid]

Get Everest and try it. See what temperatures it reports.

 

[ACCORD MAN]

OMG, it is my CPU (according to Everest)!!

Pls someone tell me what I should do?!

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: ACCORD MAN
OMG, it is my CPU (according to Everest)!!

Pls someone tell me what I should do?!

Did you install the CPU cooler yourself?
Was there thermal tape on it or did you use thermal paste?

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Done by a friend, who is a tech..

There was thermal tape.



Umm, why does it show 27C for the CPU temp in the BIOS?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: ACCORD MAN
Done by a friend, who is a tech..

There was thermal tape.



Umm, why does it show 27C for the CPU temp in the BIOS?

Can you install and run Motherboard Monitor? Does it work with your Motherboard?
See what it reports as your CPU temperature.
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Can you touch the heat sink with your bare finger? If so, the temperature sensor is lying.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
Can you touch the heat sink with your bare finger? If so, the temperature sensor is lying.

The sensor is showing the temperature of the chip, not the temperature of the heat sink. In fact, if the thermal contact between the CPU and the heat sink is poor, the heat sink may only be warm when the CPU is very hot.

I wanted to suggest running a CPU intensive program like prime95 and monitor the temperatures to see which one changes rapidly to identify the CPU. But, before doing that a reliable monitoring program (like Motherboard Monitor) needs to be installed.

 

[Trente]

IGNORE SANDRA'S REPORT!

It is known to have issues with this board...

Use the supplied Gigabyte monitoring tool (named EsayTune), or a 3rd-party tool known to be working with the K8NF-9 (such as SpeedFan).

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: ACCORD MAN
Done by a friend, who is a tech..

There was thermal tape.



Umm, why does it show 27C for the CPU temp in the BIOS?

Can you install and run Motherboard Monitor? Does it work with your Motherboard?
See what it reports as your CPU temperature.
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

No support for my mobo..

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
Can you touch the heat sink with your bare finger? If so, the temperature sensor is lying.

Yes.. And that's what's worrying me.. Its almost the same temp as the frame of the case.. So almost room temperature.. That cant be right, can it? If so, I'll reinstall the heatsink using AS5..

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
Can you touch the heat sink with your bare finger? If so, the temperature sensor is lying.

The sensor is showing the temperature of the chip, not the temperature of the heat sink. In fact, if the thermal contact between the CPU and the heat sink is poor, the heat sink may only be warm when the CPU is very hot.

I wanted to suggest running a CPU intensive program like prime95 and monitor the temperatures to see which one changes rapidly to identify the CPU. But, before doing that a reliable monitoring program (like Motherboard Monitor) needs to be installed.

This is what SpeedFan tells me at idle..

(blue arrow)Temp1: 25C
(blue arrow)Temp2: 25C
(fire) Temp3: 69C
Temp: 25C
(green check)HD1 : 40c

Also, all the "temps" are pretty much the same from the moment I bootup.

I ran Sandra's arithmetic cpu bench, and temp2 went up 2°C. Do you know of a good CPU bench that runs for more than 10 seconds? so that I can see the change more clearly.. Prime95 seems hard and painful to use.. A user friendly GUI would be great!
I did some heavy audio processing, applying effects. And the temp2 went up 4°C.

In the bios, under health it gives me a cpu temp of 25°C. Can the BIOS be lying to me?

This board has a fanless Northbridge (I think that's what its called -- where the chipset is), and that gets hot.. If I keep my finger on it for more than 4 seconds, I'll start to feel it.
Could the 69°C be for Northbridge?

Finally, my system is very stable. Even under heavy audio processing, it wont freeze/reboot..

 

[ACCORD MAN]

I'd like to thank all of you guys (Navid, FlyingPenguin, montag451 & Trente) for helping me out! Though my poblem isnt solved yet, its nice to see people taking a few minutes everyday to assist the confused (me!)..

 

[Navid]

I think you should get prime95 going. Even if everything is sorted out and you figure out why one temperature is so high and why the other ones are so low, you still need to confirm that your PC is stable. To do that, you will need prime95.

You can use ATItool to make the CPU temperature go up too. ATItool is an overclock utility for ATI cards. But, you can use it for scanning for graphics artifacts even if you do not have an ATI card.
So, after running it, click on "Scan for artifacts". It will cause the CPU temperature to go up in a minute.

You have to keep your eye on the 60-degree temperature and be ready to stop prime95 or ATItool if it rises.
If this happens, it means that the 60-degree temp is the CPU and you may need to remove the heat sink and inspect it to make sure that it makes good contact with the CPU.

If it turns out that temp2 (25) is the CPU, you may need to flash your motherboard BIOS. Other than that, I don't know what can cause this. 25 degrees cannot be correct even at idle.

 

[Trente]

Dude, I have the EXACT same mobo and the EXACT same "problem"! these programs misread the temps. I've compared temp status with EsayTune and it seems Temp2 on SpeedFan is the actual CPU temp. Just use EasyTune if don't want to bother with any 3rd-party programs.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

The sensor is showing the temperature of the chip, not the temperature of the heat sink. In fact, if the thermal contact between the CPU and the heat sink is poor, the heat sink may only be warm when the CPU is very hot.

IF the CPU core was making such poor contact with the heatsink that it's running fairly cool to the touch, AND the core was actually at that hot, it would have burned up long ago - it certainly wouldn't be stable. You can SMELL a CPU (or the heat sink compound) when it skirts around 70C. I've smelled plenty of hot CPUs.

I'm certain it's mis-reporting the temps. The case temps are too low as well unless your room is an icebox - those case temps are only 1 - 2 degrees above ambient room temp. I'd expect to see case temps closer to 80 F assuming your room is around 74 F.

Have you tried downloading the Gigabyte temp monitor yet? If anything is going to be fairly reliable it's that one, although you may also have a bad sensor.

CPU temp sensors are notorious for being innacuurate in general - they're really there just to let the mobo know if the CPU is in imminent danger of overheating so the mobo can throttle or shutdown. Inaccuracies of 5 - 8 C is not uncommon.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin

The sensor is showing the temperature of the chip, not the temperature of the heat sink. In fact, if the thermal contact between the CPU and the heat sink is poor, the heat sink may only be warm when the CPU is very hot.

IF the CPU core was making such poor contact with the heatsink that it's running fairly cool to the touch, AND the core was actually at that hot, it would have burned up long ago - it certainly wouldn't be stable. You can SMELL a CPU (or the heat sink compound) when it skirts around 70C. I've smelled plenty of hot CPUs.

70 degrees C is not that hot for a chip. The 6800 GPUs go to even higher temperatures with stock cooling. Some go to 80s under load.
Don't get me wrong, a CPU going to 70 degrees is not good and should be improved. But, it would definitely not "burn up" at 70 degrees C.

Many ICs are designed to be operational at temperatures as high as 100 C.
To qualify an IC, the manufacturer burns them at 125 C for a few weeks. That is done to age them intentionally. But, they remain operational even at 125. This is called "High Temperature Operating Life" or HTOL.


Anyway, I would try the utility that Trente suggests.
I would make sure that appropriate thermal compound OR tape (but not both) is used between the CPU and sink.
I would make sure that there is good contact between the CPU and the sink.
I would search on the web for more information about the problem with this particular motherboard that Trente is referring to and possible solutions.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

70 degrees C is not that hot for a chip. The 6800 GPUs go to even higher temperatures with stock cooling. Some go to 80s under load.

Yup, GPUs are different and most do run hot. Most mobos are set to trip alarms at a CPU temp of 70C and shutdown at 80C to protect the CPU from damage. Transistor junctions in most current generation CPUs begin to break down at 100C (yes there are execptions especially military grade, but most CPUs list 90C as an absolute max temp although they can usually exceed that) so you never want to get anywhere near 80C to play safe.

Most modern AMD CPUs with retail HSFs in my experience run around 55 - 65C (varying greatly with cooling system and room temp) which is just fine, although I personally hate to see a CPU cooking over 60C if it can be helped (replacing a pad with Artic Silver alone should easily cut 3 - 4 C off that). Not too familiar with Intel CPUs anymore.

I agree he should do some research on this - the mobo may be known for misreporting temps (maybe all it needs is a BIOS update). Also haven't heard back from him if he's used the Gigabyte temp monitor yet (which may have a built-in correction for the temp sensor).

Recommendations:

- Go to mobo manufacturer's website and check for BIOS update & download their temp monitor. While their check their FAQ or Knowledgebase for related info.

- Do an extensive Google search for heat problems with this model mobo (don't just do the Google web search - search Google Newsgroups as well)

Good luck...

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Originally posted by: Trente
Dude, I have the EXACT same mobo and the EXACT same "problem"! these programs misread the temps. I've compared temp status with EsayTune and it seems Temp2 on SpeedFan is the actual CPU temp. Just use EasyTune if don't want to bother with any 3rd-party programs.

Man I wish I knew, you had the same board/situation..

That'S settled, but I have discovered why my cpu temp is so low. My CPU is running at 1005mhz. And there's this thing that shows up during the bootup "cpuff 0 patch id:0041" <---- know what it means?

the thread : http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1562709&enterthread=y

 

[ACCORD MAN]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin

The sensor is showing the temperature of the chip, not the temperature of the heat sink. In fact, if the thermal contact between the CPU and the heat sink is poor, the heat sink may only be warm when the CPU is very hot.

IF the CPU core was making such poor contact with the heatsink that it's running fairly cool to the touch, AND the core was actually at that hot, it would have burned up long ago - it certainly wouldn't be stable. You can SMELL a CPU (or the heat sink compound) when it skirts around 70C. I've smelled plenty of hot CPUs.

I'm certain it's mis-reporting the temps. The case temps are too low as well unless your room is an icebox - those case temps are only 1 - 2 degrees above ambient room temp. I'd expect to see case temps closer to 80 F assuming your room is around 74 F.

Have you tried downloading the Gigabyte temp monitor yet? If anything is going to be fairly reliable it's that one, although you may also have a bad sensor.

CPU temp sensors are notorious for being innacuurate in general - they're really there just to let the mobo know if the CPU is in imminent danger of overheating so the mobo can throttle or shutdown. Inaccuracies of 5 - 8 C is not uncommon.

Yes I got EasyTune.. It seems the 69° is a farily known problem.
BUt now I have another problem, which I discovered thanks to Navid's supicions..

Link:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1562709&enterthread=y