Wrong heat readings? How to know for sure?

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I'm currently testing out Windows 7, and I've noticed that all of my reported temperatures are ~10C higher then when I last checked. I have a dust filter on my in-flow fan, so I doubt its due to dust. On XP (about 3 months ago) I was reading ~30 - 35C across my four cores. At the moment I'm now reading 40 - 44C? My hard drive monitor says my Primary Drive (Maxtor 250GB) is at 45C (even though I'm not doing a lot) and my data drive (Samsung F1 750GB) is at 36C. My Radeon HD4850 is at 39C.

Do these temperatures all sound okay? What is the likely cause of the recent temperature rise? And what is your favourite temperature monitoring utilty?
 
About three month ago it was january (mid-winter), it's now april (spring)

Is it possible the room the computer was in is just warmer? Or maybe even just in a warmer area of the room.

Also, even with dust filters, some dust can get in; it's worth taking a look.

Just to avoid assuming anything - is your cpu usage now the same as it was then? Maybe you just have a few more background processes running and keeping it at a higher "idle" temperature. Your hard drives seem to be quite hot, that could be affecting the ambient case temperature and thereby the CPU.

If the same utility is giving higher temps now, it's probably right - it's only when they report differently to each other you have to work out how accurate they are. I think it's safe to say that your temps are 10deg higher now, it's just a case of finding out why. That said, 45degrees is hardly pushing your die. 30-50 at idle is fine, anything under about 80 will be fine for most things. Personally I prefer not to push above 90 for any length of time, but it still won't kill the die.

One last thought, has a fan given out somewhere? I tend to find that even in a 5/6fan system the loss of one can have a significant impact.
 
Run Prime or orthos to check full load temps of cpu and WinMark 2006 ect for GPU.

What software are you using to monitor temps.
 
Audigex said:
Just to avoid assuming anything - is your cpu usage now the same as it was then? Maybe you just have a few more background processes running and keeping it at a higher "idle" temperature.
Click to expand...
Yep, Win 7 is still Vista based so no doubt it has more junk running on background than XP.

RJC said:
Run Prime or orthos to check full load temps of cpu
Click to expand...
OCCT or Intel Burn Test do that better.
 
My room is a degree or two warmer now, but not a lot different. I'm not doing any extra background processes, in fact I'm doing a lot less. Before I had three Folding Clients in the background, but I recently stopped them as we had a large electricity bill so I only turn on my computer when I'm using it.

Also, my computer is less overclocked than before (2.9GHz rather than 3.3GHz). The only major difference is the addition of the Samsung F1, which is reading at a lot cooler than the other hard drive.

Under Prime95 or OCCT the max temperatures are 52 - 55C, and VCore is 1.312.
 
To be honest, I'd say not to worry - 55c max on a 65nm quad core is never going to be a concern.

If you're bothered by the noise, go hunting for the issue; otherwise just assume it's down to running a higher average load or similar.
 
Well there's virtually no noise apart from my F1 hard drive which is sitting loose in my case due to my case being dirt cheap :P So I guess I'll just live with it, and keep an eye out for any more dramatic increases.
 
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