E8500 at 38C, ASRock x48 motherboard at 54C, huh?

[grodzman]

I’m trying to figure out if my motherboard is defective, I think it’s running extremely hot, or the temperature sensor is off by 20+ degrees.

Here’s my setup:
[fixed]ASRock X48TurboTwins Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme w/ 1x 120mm TriCool fan
2x 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 1066
2x 1TB WD1001TATS RAID1
VisionTek ATi Radeon 4870
Antec P182 case with 2x 120mm intake fans, 2x 120mm exhaust fans[/fixed]
In the motherboard’s built-in hardware monitor feature (in BIOS and in ASRock OCTuner), it’s reporting M/B temperatures of 54C and a CPU temperature of 58C at IDLE. I thought this was crazy, so I re-mounted the heatsink onto the processor with fresh Arctic Silver 5. Still nothing, exact same temperatures almost immediately after I power on the system.

Next, I decided to run SpeedFan, CoreTemp, Everest, and HWMonitor to cross-reference the temperatures. Here are the results. Load temperatures are created using Prime95’s torture test.
[fixed]System: 54C idle, 57C load
CPU: 38C idle, 47C load
Core 1: 41C idle, 50C load
Core 1: 41C idle, 50C load
Aux: 7C idle, 20C load[/fixed]I built this system about 4 days ago, so I still have a little bit of time to RMA the board. The system has completely hung 3 separate times. First time, complete freeze-up while installing printer drivers, had to restart using the reset switch, nothing in the event logs. Second time, almost identical freeze while opening up some tabs in Firefox, had to restart using the reset switch, nothing in the event logs. Third time, running Prime95, I notice CPU temperatures drop 7 degrees and AUX goes from 20C to 75C. I check ASRock OCTuner, and my system is showing as only 2GHz, I notice that the multiplier has went from 333x9.5 to 333x6.

Two questions:
Is this motherboard toast?
Why did the AUX temp jump through the roof and drop my multiplier from 9.5 to 6?

I would greatly appreciate any help.

 

[vinegarjoe]

Fist of all, I have yet to hear of a Manufacturer's Mobo temp monitor program that trumps speedfan or coretemp esp once they are calibrated correctly.

ur cpu temps look ok (in the 3rd party programs). Esp if you went through and calibrated them as per this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/221745-29-core-quad-temperature-guide

Do you have any idea what that "MB" temp is? is it a system temp, which is usally a reading of the case's internal ambient temp, or could it be your North Bridge temp? If it's your NB, I would check your air flow over the NB heatsink. If it's blocked by cables, that could be causing it to overheat, esp if you are overclocking at all.

Another possibility is that that high temp could be caused by your Vid card if the sensor is close to the PCI-E slot. Those 4870s put out a lot of heat, even if they have a rear exhaust fan on em.

If you haven't already, check ASRock's forums to see if others have had similar issues.

As for the multi drop: if you weren't at load, that drop is normal. It's part of intel's power saving features. It's called C1E in my DFI bios and is located under CPU features. It's great for everyday use, but if you want to push that OC you'll have to disable it. I got my e8400 stable with it on at 4.0ghz, but my next stop 4188mhz required me to turn off C1E. The other nice thing about it is that it doesn't just drop your multi, it also drops your vcore which will save you even more $$ on your e-bill. I hope some of this helps. Good luck w/your new build looks real nice 8)

 

[grodzman]

Thanks for the reply. So I did go through with the RMA and got a new board just to make sure I'm not crazy. Everything is exactly the same. My suspicion is that the thermal censor on the board is right above the primary PCI-E slot (where my lovely 4870 gives off a constant 80 degrees Celsius).

I played Crysis Warhead for 2 hours straight to make sure the system isn't being unstable and that the temperature readings were false. No problems what-so-ever with stability, so I think I'm going to have to say this is a closed case.

Now, I ordered a PWM fan so I can at least throttle my CPU fan. Maybe I'm confused, but under the motherboard settings I can choose a Target CPU Temperature and a Target Fan Speed. No matter what I set the temperature to, the motherboard just sets the fan to whatever target speed I select (instead of actively adjusting).

Shouldn't the motherboard slow the fan down unless it sees the CPU temperature getting high?

 

[vinegarjoe]

Yes (assuming you have a PWM fan) the mobo should change fan speed based on temperature. Look for some sort of automatic fan speed control option in your bios. If you don't see one, download speed fan and use that. There's a help section that will get you started with setting up the fan speed.

one thing I miss from my previous Gigabyte board GA-M55SLI-S4 (AM2 socket) is that it didn't need a PWM fan to vary the speed. Dunno if that was due to AMD's cool and quiet technology, or if it was b/c the gigabyte board had some sort of voltage regulator built into the fan slot.

All I know is I can't seem to get my new DFI board to vary the fan speed without a PWM fan. Even if I use one of the numerous other (non PWM fan slots) and try to run it through speed fan.

 

[grodzman]

Unfortunately SpeedFan doesn't show the PWM fan as adjustable, don't know why. I have 4 different fan sensors, and changing any of them doesn't actually yield a difference on the speed of the fan. =(