Pentium III Wacky Temperatures

[Shrub]

I've just been playing with a 500Mhz Slot 1 Pentium III. According to Speedfan there's 2 temperature sensors on the chip and after running Unreal Tournament and some media players on it I got some really high temperature readings of around 80c, which dropped very quickly to around 45c when the programs stopped running. The other sensor increased to 35 then sunk back to 30.

Does this sound normal?

 

[funnyvlad]

I don´t know but I do know that PIII 500Mhz surely isn´t a cpu for gaming. I remeber when I played Unreal Tournament on a AMD XP 1600+ and it flew fine even with an integrated gpu and 1600+ is far better cpu than the PIII you have but still the 1600+ i pure crap comparing to the best cpu´s of today.

Hahaha no offence I was just imitating some people on this forum cause there are some guys who think that everything below amd 64 4000+ is crap and those who does not have that kind of stuff should immediately UPGRADE :twisted:

Cheers and be happy and most of all: don´t listen to me, I´m just goofying around 8)

 

[Shrub]

UT runs pretty damn slick on the PIII 500, which surprised me because it was terrible on the PII 450 I was using before. SIMD rocks. I'm going to see how well PSX emulation is on it next, assuming the CPU isn't cooking itself.

 

[Shrub]

Does anyone know of any popular forums that talk about older computer components?

 

[endyen]

It sounds like your cpu fan is running too slow. Personally, I would upgrade the hsf, since new can be had for ~ $10. Just the same, if you take the fan off, and clean it, and give the heat sink a few swipes with a horse hair brush, you should be fine for a while.

 

[Shrub]

This is the thing. The heatsink doesn't even get warm, and I can't feel any significant head rise from anywhere I touch the module. The high readings drop incredibly fast when there stop the intensive programs, also.

I think the heatsink is touching the core, but I've never been able to remove these slot 1 type heatsinks so I can't check or resit it if it isn't.

 

[parlee]

i had almost the exact problem with speedfan/all temp programs on my amd3700... except idle says its 49-50C and during any task it goes right up to 55C, anything to do with gaming it jumps to 65C, but the thing is if i alt tab from a game it almost instantly drops to 50C... does anyone think this is a speedfan issue/temp sensor and not the cpu burning itself?

 

[AntiHax0r]

If it isn't your CPU, (suprisingly ....b/c Katmai PIIIs we're pretty hot) then it could be your Chipset... especially if its a passively cooled one...

All P-III cpus I believe do not have an integrated temp sensor.

 

[Shrub]

You temps sound more reasonable, parlee, but speedfan does seem very flakey sometimes.

I don't think it's the chipset. I don't even thing the chipset on this motherboard has a sensor. With the PII chip in there's only 2 entries on SpeedFan - the cpu (it could be the chipset, I don't know) and the hard drive.

I've got conflicting info on the sensors on the PIII cards - from no sensors to 3. I don't know the differences between the PIIIs, I just know that is is a 100MHZ FSB one, and I think it uses a lower vcore than the PII, so I can't see how it would increase temps of the mobo. I also saw somewhere online that someone upgraded a Dell GX1 (which I'm using for this CPU) with a modified 1.4GHZ Pentium M.

I have the PC the P3 came with, but it locks up with any of the harddrives I tried it with - it didn't come with a harddisk

 

[apache_lives]

Ah the classic P3 500 slot1...

It be fine, and as for UT i think he's refering to the original, not 2003 or 2004 - it does run fine on anything.

Slot1 cpus never had heat sensors but some had em on the mobo below the cpu - if the hsf is not hot then its telling lies.

BTW where are you refering to as the cold spot? the metal hsf or the back of the slot1 (plastic)

 

[Shrub]

I felt all over, there was nothing significantly hot. Do you reckon it's just SpeedFan that's to blame then? I don't know of any other temperature testing software, so does anyone have any good alternatives?

I'm going to have a proper play around with it tommorrow. It's not a vitally important thing - I just use the PC as a media player and the PII- 450 is fine for that, but having a free PIII is nice.

 

[apache_lives]

Dont reassemble the hsf of the P3's - youll prolly break it gettin into it (P2's were easy, the P3 S1's wernt).

Ignore the temps it will be fine, if you can feel heat but as in warm the hsf is doing its job, and iv seen a P3 coppermine machine post temps of 127c (not F - i did that and it posted ~255f) - P3 tualatins finally added proper thermal sensors that could actually get accurate temps.

And BTW for multimedia the P3 should be loads quicker then the P2 thanks to SSE (aparently makes it quicker).

 

[parlee]

i get that same 127C read on my amd3700 with speedfan, stuff like this leads me to believe that speedfan is only good with popular cores (i run on a socket 754 clawhammer core)

 

[Kelledin]

Dont reassemble the hsf of the P3's - youll prolly break it gettin into it (P2's were easy, the P3 S1's wernt).

Actually, there is a nifty little trick you can try when you've got the open-end Slot 1 cartridge with the snap-in HSF clips (a la OEM P3). You can use a typical case screw to push the snap-in posts back out--just set the screw head-down on your work surface, set the CPU on top of it so the snap-in post nestles in the end of the thread shank, and give it a moderate-force push. I've actually done that quite a few times, and the whole thing goes right back together without a problem.

Retail HSFs for that cartridge usually had the posts going all the way through and sticking out the backside of the cartridge, with some kind of removable latching mechanism gripping the ends on the backside.

As far as the temps go, I bet we're all wondering why exactly there are two temperature readings being reported for the CPU. I'd suspect one might not be the CPU at all, but might be a thermistor elsewhere on the motherboard, maybe placed to pick up ambient or chipset temperatures. Or it might be a GPU temp sensor? Who knows. 80C definitely sounds too high though, whatever it's measuring.

I'd see which sensor shoots up when you run Sandra's CPU burn-in test. That'll be your CPU temp.

P.S. I first played Unreal on a P2-300 with a 12MB Voodoo2. Man, it was sweet. 8)

 

[apache_lives]

ah the good ole Voodoo2's - still got two of em SLI'd

 

[AntiHax0r]

Hehe, voodoo2s... I traded my Radeon 7000 64mb a few years back, for those two things and a full pII system...