What are ideal heat sensor locations?

[Will5639]

Well, for those who recal my earlier topics I am happily running from my new PC. Ended up having to do it entirely myself and spent ... lets just say I spent a long time putting it together, ok? LOL. Testing out Windows 7 RC.

I went with a Scythe KM02 Fan Controller and have 4 heat sensors available to me. I'm not worried about the correlation between sensor and fan, but I would like to know where would be the best spots to keep track of?

I have them tested and functioning in a few spots... ones on the far end of my heatsink, another on one of my harddrives, one was supposed to be ON but is now hovering immediately above my graphics card, and the last I honestly don't remember - I thought I put that one near the PSU (not ON).

Now I think the longest/hardest-running I've had my computer on at this time was maybe 6 hours-8 hours doing some World of Warcraft and old school CoD-UO. The highest temperature that I've seen has yet to break 100F (the smart thing would be for me to write down which sensor that was!). Pretty damn good huh? But I'm wondering if I'm using poor locations and that in return is not giving me true temperatures?

 

[LLJones]

As most gpu/cpu hdd have a temperature readout option, I place my probes under the NB/SB, one in a memory stick, I simply lifted one edge of the heat shield which pulled some of the thermal tape off and put the probe between the chip and the heat tape.
The other two I use for air temp in and out.

To place the probes accurately under the NS/SB, I took the heatsinks off of the board after applying thermal compound and VERY carefully scribed two intersecting lines which formed one corner of the chip using the outline left by the compound.

A little hot glue on the edge of the heatsink to stop the wire from moving around, and everything works fine. I have verified the probe temps by using an IR gun. The probes were .2c cooler then the gun temp.

You could also try to put a probe on mem chip on your video card to see how hot it is.

Anywhere that the temp is critical but not easily readable is a good spot.

Plan the route for the wire and probe. I lucked out, my NB/SB had one side with very little in the way of SMD's providing lots of clearance.

Right click view image on above links. Hope it helps