Pre-overclock: Strange temperature reported on AMD Phenom II x3 720

Hoping somebody can shed some light on temperatures of my cpu as I'm seriously confused by getting different apps reporting different temperatures, and as I want to start overclocking I want to make sure the temps are safe before doing so

I recently bought the below and put it in a Antec P182 Case with Corsair HX 620W PSU and a Nvidia 8800GTX:
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £104.99 1 £104.99
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £99.99 1 £99.99
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel (TW3X4G1333C9) £49.56 1 £49.56
Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) £27.82 1 £27.82

Now I'm pretty sure I applied right amount of thermal paste and spread it evenly on the cpu before putting on the cooler.

Below is what I get after running prime95 for about an hour, no overclock or any changes from default
CoreTemp 0.99.5: Only shows 1 temperature CPU #0 = 30°C, low 29°C, High 31°C
Speedfan 4.39, Shows 2 Core values, both entitled Core, the first one = 30°C, the next one = 64°C ( What is that ? )
Gigabyte's Etune 6: Only shows one CPU Temp value and this is 41°C
SIW: Okay, I know, not really a cpu monitoring tool but it does pickup sensors and shows seperate temperatures for each core, all sitting at 30°C

From the above I'm seriously confused:
What's speedfan picking up at 64°C ?
Why does etune show Cpu temp as 41°C when the others seem to pickup same value of 30°C ?
How normal is this temp under load ? IS it good, average or bad based on the cooler I have ?

Any help is much appreciated !

gfx card seems to be 64c 8800GTX's run hot at idle

The 64 looks to be your graphics card indeed.

The 30C is most likely the average of the three cores or is a "chip" temperature (temparature of the whole CPU, rather than each individual core.

Go with CoreTemp... it's rarely wrong and they lok about right; no idea why it's only showing one core though :s

Graphics card, that makes sense, thanks

I'll ignore the Etune temp of 41, especially as 2 seperate apps gave it at 30

The 'core' temp. sensor on the 720 is a law unto itself, look around and you'll find people reporting temps. that are sub ambient which is of course impossible.

There is a second temperature reading that some sw reports, the cpu reading, for want of a better name, that looked plausible with my 720 on an asus m3a79t-deluxe. This is the value reported by the Asus supplied sw, AsusProbe.

SpeedFan reports two temperature on my setup too. One is the core and one is the cpu reading. Start SpeedFan and check the temps at idle. Now put a load on the cpu, Prime95 is a good choice and you may see both of the SpeedFan cpu temps jump almost instantly, if you do then they are both reporting a value for the cpu.

Hehe, I was just coming to make a thread on this 'issue' and then I found this first.

I just built a new system yesterday using this CPU. Tested the temps this morning and they seemed low to me. 19-20c at idle and 39-40c under Prime. It's a strange feeling to be concerned that temps are too low. All the more so as Royal Mail have chosen to keep hold of the Sunbeam that I ordered last week so these temps are with the stock HSF.

Does anyone know of a reliable source/method for 720 temps? Eventually I'd like to do a little novice clocking when the the Sunbeam arrives but I don't want to bust things due to incorrect temps or whatever.

The 720 only has one temperature monitor, so coretemp etc only show one measurement for it.

Note: This is a VERY cool running chip anyway, like ridiculously so, and quite a few people are simply expecting a lot higher. It may well be that your readings aren't wrong, it's just that you're used to hotter running chips.

If you can get hold of a temperature probe, place it against the side of the chip and see what that reads, then the top of the heatsink block if you're using one you can do it on. If they read somewhere similar then you're onto a winner. If they read a few degrees under, don't worry, if they read anything over, just add that number to any readings given.

My 720, 4 case fans and a TRUE gives temps of 1-2c above ambient at idle - about right - and about 20c above ambient at load. The heatsink doesn't get hot to the touch and the exhaust fan is still blowing skin temperature air. I've not gotten hold of a temperature probe, but speedfan, amd overdrive, coretemp and my skin all agree that it's about there.