GA-MA78LM-S2H - Weird CPU temperature detected.

[phil_12345]

Hi,

System Info:
MB: GA-MA78LM-S2H
CPU: Phenome II x4 3.2 Ghz.
Mem: 4Gb Kingston Hyper DDR2 (1066)
Video: Ati HD5670 (1Gb GDDR5).


This is the very first  Gigabyte motheboard I purchased since the day of 286 intel CPU (mostly use Asus and/or MSI).
EasyTune6 (and bios) indicated CPU temperature at almost 20 degree C HIGHER than other CPU temperature software that I
use such as Coretemp, AMD Override, SiSoftware Sandra, etc... (they all agree on the same temperature + or - few degrees.)

Most of the time ET6 indicate CPU at around 40-45 degree C, but other software indicate CPU around 25-30 degree (default cpu speed).   The CPU heatsink (after market Thermaltake large heatsink and fan) just a little warm when touch so I know that the temperature can not be more than 40 degree C as indicated by ET6.   BTW, the CPU overclock to 3.85Ghz stable so I know the heatsink/fan does it's job correctly.

The two million question are:  which software should I trust for monitoring CPU temperature and why such a different in temperature reading of ET6 and other software?  Is there an issue with ET6 that I'm not aware of?


Thank you.

    

[absic]

Hi there,

If your Temps in BIOS are being shown as the same in EasyTune6 then I would think that it is reporting the temperatures more accurately than the other software. Getting some software to report temps of an overclocked CPU accurately is, shall we say, sometimes problematic.

This question has come up before and Gigabyte's response is to only use Easytune6 for reporting system temps but personally I don't like to use it. On my system I run CoreTemp which seems to be about the best of the bunch.

[phil_12345]

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback but ET6 still report CPU temperature higher (at least 15-20 C) compared to other cpu temp monitoring programs even when running at normal/default cpu speed at 3.2Ghz.   My previous Asus MB (socket 939 + Athlon x2 64) bios and Asus monitoring software report back the cpu temperature very similar to those temperature monitoring program mentioned in the original post - even when overclocked.  

Core Temp is also one of my favourite cpu monitoring program.   Therefore I found it is very strange due to large differences in cpu temperature reported by Core Temp and ET6.

As mentioned, this is my very first Gigabyte MB therefore I am not too familar with what's work and what's not work regarding Gigabyte product.
I guess I would go with Core Temp  because I used it for year(s) on various systems and ET6 has NOT earn my trust yet.

BTW:  the heat transfer 'stuff' Gigabyte use for NB and SB heat sink is awful and all dried up.   I end up have to take off the NB+SB heatsink; clean the stuff off and put on new proper Artic Silver thermal compound.

[absic]

The best advice I can offer regarding temps is to check in BIOS what figures are being reported then compare against the figures being shown in different software. Of course, this is easier said than done and it does mean a lot of rebooting, going into BIOS and checking before going back into the OS.

Yes, the thermal paste used on the Northbridge and Southbridge heatsinks does leave a lot to be desired!