Recommendation for CPU Temp Monitoring Software

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
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Motherboard monitor does not support my AsRock 4Core-Dual mobo, so any other simple and efficient CPU monitoring programs that will put a temp display in my pc systray?

Thanks,

Pradeep
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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Use the one that comes with your mobo - I've never had any problems with those that have come with mine. You'll have to manually configure Speedfan for your mobo while the one that comes with is pre-configured as far as possible. And may support some mobo features that SF won't.

.bh.
 

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
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My mobo can read the temps and fan speeds, but it didn't come with any software. I can see the info. in the BIOS, but I'd like a realtime update.
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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It may not get automatically installed but it is on the software CD with all Asus/Asrock mobos. Just find it and install it. Probably under the Utilities menu on the CD.

.bh.
 

pradeep1

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Jun 4, 2005
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Thanks for the info guys. I installed Speedfan and it read my mobo directly and all is good. I have a nice neat temp indicator sitting in my systray.

Pradeep
 

Roguestar

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Aug 29, 2006
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Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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Geez, I guess Asrock doesn't provide monitor software - cheap barstids... Especially when they can get a base utility for free from the health monitor chip makers and all they have to do is tweak it a bit for their mobo and put an asrock skin on it.

.bh.
 

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: Roguestar
Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.

Wow, what a difference! Speedfan was showing that my CPU cores were cooking at about 45 C, whereas Intel TAT tells me that they are at about 63 C. Do I need to reevaluate my cooling strategy, or is this temperature okay for a Core2Duo e4300?
 

Roguestar

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Aug 29, 2006
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Originally posted by: pradeep1
Originally posted by: Roguestar
Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.

Wow, what a difference! Speedfan was showing that my CPU cores were cooking at about 45 C, whereas Intel TAT tells me that they are at about 63 C. Do I need to reevaluate my cooling strategy, or is this temperature okay for a Core2Duo e4300?
It's technically okay to run at that but it's a bit hot for my liking. Is that 63°C under load or idle? Use the inbuilt function of IntelTAT to load the cores; from what I've seen nothing will fire up the temperature like that, not even Orthos. It's designed to load everything in as stressful a fashion as possible. It wouldn't replace Orthos because it doesn't tell you if it encounters process errors, it'll just try and get your CPU going as hot as possible. This gives you an idea of how hot you could ever expect it to get under stress.

Basically, run Orthos or the load function of TAT and if that goes into the 70s, it's time to get a new heatsink/fan (or make sure your current one is properly TIM'd and seated correctly.
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
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Originally posted by: Roguestar
Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.

Speedfan now uses the internal CPU sensor as well as the external one so it ought to be as accurate.

Zepper
Cool! ,I thought MBM would never be updated again ,even more so when its site went down a few months ago.
Thanks for the link :)
Btw is their any more info on that update? where did it come from?
 

Nohr

Diamond Member
Jan 6, 2001
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www.flickr.com
Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Originally posted by: Roguestar
Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.
Speedfan now uses the internal CPU sensor as well as the external one so it ought to be as accurate.
Agreed. Speedfan v4.31 was off but v4.32 is accurate to within 1C of Intel's TAT.
 

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
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You can also try Everest. It is not free. But, you can use the demo to compare with your other readings.
I think it is about $30.00.
What is really nice about it is that you can use it to monitor all the temperatures in your system on your taskbar at the same time, what Speedfan cannot do. With SpeedFan, you have to choose one of the temperatures and it only shows that one.

Another advantage of Vista is that it runs on Vista.
Motherboard Monitor can also show more than one temperature. But, it does not run on the 64-bit version of Vista.
It does not show your GPU temperatures either. Everest does.

http://www.lavalys.com/
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,152
517
126
MBM can be made to show GPU temps but it needs ATITool to be run alongside.

Sensors View pro is another good monitoring program (except when I last checked in February it didn't use the internal CPU sensor,BUT they said the next version should have) ,it's not free either.
 

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: Roguestar
Originally posted by: pradeep1
Originally posted by: Roguestar
Trust only the Intel TAT.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/392/mirrors.php

This may deliver temperature readings quite different from Speedfan. This is because it is accurate. It will read from the digital temperature sensor inside the die of the processor and not from the temperature sensor inside the CPU socket that the motherboard's CPU sensor reads from.

Wow, what a difference! Speedfan was showing that my CPU cores were cooking at about 45 C, whereas Intel TAT tells me that they are at about 63 C. Do I need to reevaluate my cooling strategy, or is this temperature okay for a Core2Duo e4300?
It's technically okay to run at that but it's a bit hot for my liking. Is that 63°C under load or idle? Use the inbuilt function of IntelTAT to load the cores; from what I've seen nothing will fire up the temperature like that, not even Orthos. It's designed to load everything in as stressful a fashion as possible. It wouldn't replace Orthos because it doesn't tell you if it encounters process errors, it'll just try and get your CPU going as hot as possible. This gives you an idea of how hot you could ever expect it to get under stress.

Basically, run Orthos or the load function of TAT and if that goes into the 70s, it's time to get a new heatsink/fan (or make sure your current one is properly TIM'd and seated correctly.



Oh, okay. TAT is used for stressing your CPU. I didn't know that. I run two cores of Folding@Home 24/7/365 and with that, my temps in speedfan were in the 40-43 C range. When I fired up TAT, it jumped up the 61-63 range and that scared me. But I didn't realize that it was the max stress for the CPU.

Does F@H stress the CPU as much as TAT does?
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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Assimilator -
Zepper,
Btw is their any more info on that MBM update? where did it come from?

Do you see the quote at the bottom of the linked page - that is from the original author of MBM.

.bh.
 

Roguestar

Diamond Member
Aug 29, 2006
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Originally posted by: pradeep1
Does F@H stress the CPU as much as TAT does?

In my experience (Orthos Dual Prime95 and 3Dmark06 at the same time), nothing heats up the CPU in the same way TAT does. It's designed, it seems, purely to run every part as fast and as deeply as possible, but not in such a way as to simulate actual usage or productive processing. It's handy as a burn-in and to gauge the top end you could ever expect to seem temps peaking at. It's a handy function, but I find TAT best used to gauge heat (without running its load core function) whilst running other stress tests.
 

wgoldfarb

Senior member
Aug 26, 2006
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Originally posted by: pradeep1
[
Oh, okay. TAT is used for stressing your CPU. I didn't know that. I run two cores of Folding@Home 24/7/365 and with that, my temps in speedfan were in the 40-43 C range. When I fired up TAT, it jumped up the 61-63 range and that scared me. But I didn't realize that it was the max stress for the CPU.

Does F@H stress the CPU as much as TAT does?

TAT will only stress your CPU cores when you hit the "Start" buttons next to the "workload level" drop down box for each core. If you did NOT hit those buttons then TAT was not loading your CPU, it was just measuring the temperature. Still, if you had F@H in the background, your CPU was not idle.

There is an easy way to compare the measurements from TAT and Speedfan: just make sure both TAT and speedfan are running at the same time, and compare the temps :). The core temps reported by speedfan should be within 1C of those reported by TAT. As mentioned above, make sure you have the latest version of speedfan, as earlier versions did not provide accurate measurements of the core temperatures.

As Roguestar said, nothing stresses (or heats up) the cores as much as TAT. If you place a full TAT load on both cores and your temps go up to 65C, you are ok. 65C is considered by Intel a safe and sustainable temperature under load for the Core 2 duos, and it is very unlikely that any other load will make your temps go any higher.

If you are at 65C when Idle, your temps are too high (note that idle means that F@H is NOT running in the background!).

You can read this for more info on C2D temperatures.
 

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
1,099
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Originally posted by: wgoldfarb
Originally posted by: pradeep1
[
Oh, okay. TAT is used for stressing your CPU. I didn't know that. I run two cores of Folding@Home 24/7/365 and with that, my temps in speedfan were in the 40-43 C range. When I fired up TAT, it jumped up the 61-63 range and that scared me. But I didn't realize that it was the max stress for the CPU.

Does F@H stress the CPU as much as TAT does?

TAT will only stress your CPU cores when you hit the "Start" buttons next to the "workload level" drop down box for each core. If you did NOT hit those buttons then TAT was not loading your CPU, it was just measuring the temperature. Still, if you had F@H in the background, your CPU was not idle.

There is an easy way to compare the measurements from TAT and Speedfan: just make sure both TAT and speedfan are running at the same time, and compare the temps :). The core temps reported by speedfan should be within 1C of those reported by TAT. As mentioned above, make sure you have the latest version of speedfan, as earlier versions did not provide accurate measurements of the core temperatures.

As Roguestar said, nothing stresses (or heats up) the cores as much as TAT. If you place a full TAT load on both cores and your temps go up to 65C, you are ok. 65C is considered by Intel a safe and sustainable temperature under load for the Core 2 duos, and it is very unlikely that any other load will make your temps go any higher.

If you are at 65C when Idle, your temps are too high (note that idle means that F@H is NOT running in the background!).

You can read this for more info on C2D temperatures.

Thanks everyone for the great info, especially wgoldfarb.

Here are my temps read from TAT under the following conditions. Please let me know if I am okay.

Idle: 49 and 51 degrees C in Core 1 and 2

2 F@H cores 100% Loaded: 61 and 61 degrees C in Core 1 and 2

TAT 100% Loaded: 72 and 70 degrees C in Core 1 and 2

 

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
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Is there any way to make speedfan show more than just one temperature on the taskbar?