Temperature variations mislead us all!

[her own pride]

I have noticed how people post their temps on the forums and after monitoring mine over the last year I can say that temperatures are useless for comparison, however they are useful to notice a sudden rise in temps (or fall).

In the winter my processor temps for an AMD athlon XP Palimino hit 43 degrees C max, and were often below 40. However this summer I cannot keep my temps below 50 degrees C unless its a cool day. However since 70 degrees is considered to be the safety limit, and my PC is functioning fine this would seem well.

Also I keep my PC running very quiet, and have heard of others running their AMD athlons into the 60's at most without them having problems.

I would say there is only real reason to be alarmed of high temps if you are either overclocking (most like to keep their PC's below 45 degrees) and if temps rise above 65-70.

The AMD chips have their designed limits and so would I be right in presuming I am safe with temperatures up to 70 degrees if I am not overclocking. Do temperatures as high as mine only matter if overclocking?

The Athlons are designed for this are they not?

[bassman]

Overclocking or not, the Athlon limit, according to AMD, is 90ºC; hit this and it'll melt. Obviously, running it constantly at 80ºC will probably shorten it's lifetime. The CPU temp will, as you said, depend on a number of factors like case temperature, room temperature, CPU and case cooling, etc...My T-Bird runs around 65ºC (ambient temperature here is around 35ºC at this time of the year) without any problem (anyway, I'm getting a new HSF, to lower it a bit), and I have the BIOS set to shut down the system when the CPU reaches 70ºC (wich never happened). I can't see the relation between temperature and overclocking in the terms you specified; IMO, it's just not good to have the CPU running at 75-80ºC, either you're OC'ing it or not.

[Billforce]

As I have posted in the past, any cooling device be it a F/H or a radiator is judged by the Delta "T". That is temperature in vs. temp. out. An air/ liquid cooling device like a radiator is efficient if you achieve a 10 deg. F. Temp. drop., conversely an very efficient air to air cooling device like a H/F will see a 10 deg. temp. rise. So if your ambient temp. is 70 deg F., then the CPU will be be cooled to a minimum of 10 deg. OVER ambient, or 80 deg F. The more efficient the cooling device, the lower the exit temp.
Right now I am reading VCool on my AMD 2000+ CPU at 104 deg F., and the case temp. at 87 deg. F. and the ambient temp. in the room at 75 deg. F. If I ducted the room air directly to the CPU I would see a CPU temp. at about 92 deg.
I watch the temp constantly and as the ambient drops, so does the CPU temp. but never lower than 100 deg. F.
When I installed VCool, it dropped the CPU temp. by 10 deg. C. if I enable idle loop.

[her own pride]

Proof indead then that the temperature of your CPU can be altered and fluctuate all over the spectrum. But what seems to be the prime concern is that everything is good if you ain't going over a large significant point, which would be 70 degrees, and possibly 80 degrees in 3000 years when the suns a bit closer.

[cbh]

How can you find out about the temperature of your processor?

:rolleyes:

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by cbh
How can you find out about the temperature of your processor?Please stop using the darned "rolleyes" smiley all the time, cbh. You do it at the least opportune moments, which I find extremely irritating.

You can use Speedfan:

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

...or you can boot into BIOS setup and look in the PC Health section. (here is where I could use :rolleyes: , but I won't).



Oops! ;)

[AllGamer]

yes as far as FREE utility goes for Temperature Monitoring, Speed Fan is the best from all the ones i've tried so far

:t

[her own pride]

2 methods

Either enter your Bios (press del or F1 when you start your PC)
Then look down the list of options till you have something like "PC Health Status" in there it will have your CPU temp.

Or Use software like MBM (Mother board monitor, latest version is 5 i think, use google) but you need to read the instructions to understand setting it up. or that speedfan which is actually a bit easier to use i think......


The Bios option is best to check to see whether you have a motherboard with a sensor for the processor. Also you may find that if you have an AMD athlon XP/ Pentium 4 that their is a temperature sensor on the processor which gives much better results.

And you can also buy a temperature sensor for processors although these may be more unreliable the general point of this thread was the fact that all methods have unreliability, the best use for you is to see whether it looks very bad, ie over 70 degrees C, and if thats below then you can check your temps and notice if there are ever significant increases in temperature without reason (ie a cold day and a hot day will obviously cause temperature changes, and are not too much of a concern as long as your temps are under the limit).

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Vcool, small and resource friendly temp monitor with built in idle cycle cooling to boot, wundebar! (NB: May not work on all mobo's :()

--Jakk:t

[Billforce]

VCool is the best, shows temps...fan speeds etc, but will only work with AMD on SPECIFIC motherboards.

[Ammok]

I can't agree that temps are useless for comparison, look at what most people are hitting and you soon see a trend, and I would say for athlons 40 to 55 degrees is a good place to be, over fifty five not so good.

Point is, even with regional and seasonal variations, if your cpu is at 60c you know its hotter than most, so you could consider a better heatsink, if it is running at 42c no need for extra help in cooling. Now it is a broad brush, but useful. Mine is running at 37c at the mo, but I'm not gaming, can hit 47c but usually 42-45c.