More reliable software for hardware sensors?

I have tried out a number of different temperature monitors during my time helping within the crashing and debugging forums. I am now wondering if these monitors are accurate because they claim my desktop CPU is getting up to 76 C. Q9550 shows that the max is 71.4 C (or 76.4 C if one adds the 5 C), so I would be very surprised if my cores were actually getting to 76 C on a regular basis for the past two years without a catastrophic failure resulting. See the images attached for HWINFO, RealTemp, SpeedFan, and Core Temp in that order. I am wondering if the TJMax might be offset from 76 to 100 and that is causing the erroneous readings from my sensors.









Is there a better program for monitoring system temperatures than HWINFO, RealTemp, SpeedFan, and Core Temp?

I don't put a lot of faith in any of them.

Do any of them do anything other than try to read a number from the BIOS?

I've never made a study of them, but I don't really understand why they vary so much.

I use HWInfo, but don't take its readings too seriously.

I have a setting in my BIOS to set off an audio alarm if temps rise above a certain point that I can choose. As long as I don't hear that, I don't agonize over it.

What is the TJ Max on your processor? I wouldn't be surprised if you could operate for years in the 70s.

ignatzatsonic said:

I don't put a lot of faith in any of them.

Do any of them do anything other than try to read a number from the BIOS?

I've never made a study of them, but I don't really understand why they vary so much.

I use HWInfo, but don't take its readings too seriously.

I have a setting in my BIOS to set off an audio alarm if temps rise above a certain point that I can choose. As long as I don't hear that, I don't agonize over it.

What is the TJ Max on your processor? I wouldn't be surprised if you could operate for years in the 70s.

TCase is 71.4 C, so TJ Max should be 76.4 C; All four sensor programs show my temperatures about the same +/- 2 C. The reason they vary so much in the images is I was using prime95 to show how hot they get, so the temperatures rose a bit during the time it took for me to take an image of each. I am thinking that TJ Max for the programs being set at 100 C is misleading. If I adjust it in RealTemp to 76 C instead, for instance, my temperatures look a lot more reasonable. With it adjusted, I get temperatures of 30 C at idle and a max of 56 C during stress.

I thought TJ Max was closer to 100 on that processor. Just wondering why you added 5 degrees to TCase of 71.4 to get TJ Max?

Have you seen this:

The Truth about Temperatures and Voltages

which says, among other things:

TJ Max is an inherently unreliable and inaccurate method of measuring idle/low temperatures. Due to the way it was designed, the readings are so inaccurate under 50C that Intel says they can only be read as a number temperature below 50C. As the temperature approaches TJ Max, the precision increases and at TJ Max the temperature is considered to be 100% accurate. Because of this error at low temperatures, sub-ambient temperature/very high readings are sometimes given for idle temperatures. With the TJ Max method, your idle temperatures have no accuracy and therefore should be ignored. Under load, the temperatures become much more accurate and should be very carefully monitored.

The argument then says that you should calibrate your TJ Max by measuring the ambient temperature in the room, setting your CPU at stock with stock voltages, but then lower your multiplier to the lowest possible (usually 6 for Core 2 CPUs). Then adjust the TJ Max until your idle temp readings are about 7C higher than ambient. The problem with this argument is that Intel has implied that the Distance to TJ Max values are not linear, and therefore you would have accurate idle temps (not important) and very inaccurate load temps (very important).

ignatzatsonic said:

I thought TJ Max was closer to 100 on that processor. Just wondering why you added 5 degrees to TCase of 71.4 to get TJ Max?

Have you seen this:

The Truth about Temperatures and Voltages

which says, among other things:

TJ Max is an inherently unreliable and inaccurate method of measuring idle/low temperatures. Due to the way it was designed, the readings are so inaccurate under 50C that Intel says they can only be read as a number temperature below 50C. As the temperature approaches TJ Max, the precision increases and at TJ Max the temperature is considered to be 100% accurate. Because of this error at low temperatures, sub-ambient temperature/very high readings are sometimes given for idle temperatures. With the TJ Max method, your idle temperatures have no accuracy and therefore should be ignored. Under load, the temperatures become much more accurate and should be very carefully monitored.

The argument then says that you should calibrate your TJ Max by measuring the ambient temperature in the room, setting your CPU at stock with stock voltages, but then lower your multiplier to the lowest possible (usually 6 for Core 2 CPUs). Then adjust the TJ Max until your idle temp readings are about 7C higher than ambient. The problem with this argument is that Intel has implied that the Distance to TJ Max values are not linear, and therefore you would have accurate idle temps (not important) and very inaccurate load temps (very important).

I think I misunderstood what TJ Max is. I thought it was the maximum temperature of the processor. It appears to not be the Tcase from what I am reading. The Q series seems to have a max Tjunction of 90-100 C depending on the processor, so maybe 100 C is correct. The max processor temp I have seen calculated using the case temp + 5 C, but that may be a conservative value.

panais said:

I prefer to keep it simple,

Are you overclocking anything?

Nope, I do not like overclocking. Why limit my electronics' life when I do not have any money to buy new components?

And if you wonder about dust, the system is dust free as of a week ago. I thoroughly clean the dust out every few weeks.