low core temps asrock conroe motherboard

[ticket]

I have an Asrock conroe 1333 DVI motherboard. lm-sensors appears to detect OK but I believe the core temps are a little low. I have a E2160 CPU in there and at idle it shows ~22. I have a similar PC on windows which idles at around 38.

If I use windows on my linux PC speedfan also reports the same low value as lm-sensors (~22 degs) but HWMonitor from cpuid.com shows at around 38 i.e. the same as the other box. The other box shows the higher figure in speedfan and HWmonitor, but I am unable to try linux.

From looking at the other figures I believe that HWmonitor is reporting correctly and lm-sensors is reading too low, though obviously I cannot prove it one way or the other.

Is there any sort of correlation I can do do get the correct temp. Obviously the authors of HWmonitor are doing something slightly different to the speedfan and lm-sensors authors, and I will email them to see if I get a response.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks

My output is as follows:

# sensors
w83627ehf-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore:     +1.18 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +1.74 V)
in1:       +7.87 V  (min = +13.46 V, max = +13.46 V) ALARM
AVCC:      +3.31 V  (min =  +3.57 V, max =  +4.08 V) ALARM
3VCC:      +3.31 V  (min =  +3.06 V, max =  +4.08 V)
in4:       +1.68 V  (min =  +1.52 V, max =  +2.04 V)
in5:       +1.70 V  (min =  +1.91 V, max =  +2.04 V) ALARM
in6:       +6.07 V  (min =  +6.53 V, max =  +4.89 V) ALARM
VSB:       +3.31 V  (min =  +3.06 V, max =  +4.08 V)
VBAT:      +1.55 V  (min =  +4.08 V, max =  +4.08 V) ALARM
in9:       +1.62 V  (min =  +1.91 V, max =  +2.04 V) ALARM
Case Fan:    0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 128)
CPU Fan:  2766 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 8)
Aux Fan:     0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 128)
fan5:        0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 128)
Sys Temp:    +31°C  (high =    -1°C, hyst =  +127°C)
CPU Temp:  +28.0°C  (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C)
AUX Temp:  +42.5°C  (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:      +22°C  (high =   +85°C)

coretemp-isa-0001
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 1:      +25°C  (high =   +85°C)

[khali]

The temperature reported by Core and Core 2 CPUs is a relative one. What it really says is how far you are from the maximum temperature the CPU supports. To compute the "absolute" temperature value, we need to know what the maximum temperature is for every CPU model. The problem is that this has not always been clearly documented by Intel. To make a long story short, some CPUs have a 85 degrees C limit and some have a 100 degrees C limit. We have a heuristic in the coretemp driver to attempt to get the right limit for all CPU models, but it might not be 100% correct. Presumably the SpeedFan? and HWmonitor developers also have heuristics which may differ slightly from ours. This would explain the difference you see. Notice how 38 - 22 ~= 100 - 85.

[khali]

You didn't tell which kernel you were running. The max temperature heuristic was improved in kernel 2.6.25, maybe this will help you.

Anyway, what is really important isn't the absolute temperature. What matters is that your CPU is running 60 degrees C below its maximum operating temperature. This means you have a huge margin, so the bottom line is that your system is doing just fine and you do not have to worry about it overheating.