Soyo 7IS2 Mobo and Incorrect Temps

[wlp]

Just a quick question for anybody with some insight.

I bought a Soyo 7IS2 motherboard for the "family" pc. It's socket 370 board with Intel's 815EP chipset (NOT revision B so it doesn't support Tualatin).

I have installed a retail Pentium III 1.0B Ghz in the FCPGA-2 packaging using the retail boxed heatsink and fan.

The BIOS reports a consistent core temperature of 78C. This in no way can be correct.

As an experiment, I swapped it out with a PIII 933 and got a core temperature of 81C.

I ran Motherboard Monitor with the 1gig and got a run temp of 40C, ambient of 32C. Much more normal.

No lockups, nor abnormalities. Turn off the fan on the heatsink and it gets warm, and then progressively hot so I know that it is making good contact. Turn the fan back on and the heatsink cools back down.

I did a search here and on the web at large and only came across one other mention of this issue with this board. But there was no response back to that post (at another website).

Has anyone else experienced this weirdness with this board, or any other?

I verified that the BIOS was current. I also cleared the CMOS to make sure it wasn't something goofy in there causing problems.

System works just fine so I am just looking for answers as to WHY it is so blantantly misreporting CPU core temps.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot, the ambient temp that the BIOS reports is normal.

--wlp

 

[Rmcky]

Hey WLP, I had that same board and experienced exactly the same results as you. IMHO, the CPU temp appeared to be just about double what it was actually running. This is just an estimate, as all I could actually check it with was an external probe which wasn't quite as accurate as the internal diode the board reads from. With the probe, I read temps in the 80-100F range from idle to full load. With the board reading the intenal diode, my reading ranged from 76C at idle to around 80C at full load. I contacted Soyo about issuing a BIOS update to correct the problem and was informed that they had probably issued their last update for the board, since it already supported all of the current and planned Coppermine CPUs. I bitched a little and was futher informed that I should expect a quirk or two out of a cheap motherboard. Not ammusing, since I actually paid $120 for the board from CompUSA. Didn't seem so cheap at the time. The bright spot concerning all this is that your CPU is running at normal temps, for sure, and that other than that shortcoming, the board is extremely stable, even when overclocked to the max. I ran the board for several months on my son's gaming rig, which gets pretty severe workouts, and experience absolutely no stability problems at all. Also, I ran FSBs of 115, 133, and up to 143 without any problems, so it a pretty versatile board, as long as you don't need FSBs between 115 and 133. As far as getting any releif on the IC sensor issue, I wouldn't hold my breath. HTH

Rick

 

[wlp]

Thanks so much for your reply.

I knew it couldn't be my imagination. And I knew it couldn't be really running at those temps.

I have used Soyo in the past with no ill effects. They make pretty stable boards. Maybe not always the fastest (although they seem to be up there as of recently with the Dragon series) but definitely stable.

Thanks once again.

--wlp

 

[Mikewarrior2]

This isn't the first time soyo had funky internal diode readings The Soyo 6BA+III and IV boards also had weird quirks....

Probable cause: Bad set of capacitors or resistors along the way between the hardware IC monitoring chip and the internal diode pins.



Mike

 

[wlp]

One more quick question.

What about the voltage...did it "misreport" the voltage on your board as well?

Mine is.

Would just like to compare once more.

--wlp

 

[Rmcky]

Hey wlp, I don't own the board any longer, but to the best of my recolection, it reported the voltages it sense correctly. Seems I remember that MBM5 would try to read a couple of voltages that the sensor didn't actually track. I think I checked into it and pehaps the -5 and -12v were not tracked. Check your BIOS and see what's reported there. If MBM is reporting additional rails, it's reporting them in error. Also, Soyo changed what one of the voltage rails usually means, maybe the 3.3VIO, don't really remember. I was able to get quite a bit of info from the FAQ page on Soyo's website, although some was erroneous, such as them saying that 76C CPU reading was correct because it was reading from the internal diode. That turned out to be simply CYA BS. As far as the CPU voltages went, they were pretty much in spec, perhaps a few hundreths off, but as close as most other boards. Also, the voltage adjustment percentages seemed to be pretty much on the mark. HTH

Rick