80C After Unlocking Athlon II X3 445?

[IAreKyleW00t]

Basically it's what the title says. My AMD Athlon II X3 445 is stock set at 3.1GHz; Getting a temp of ~25C with the stock cooler at idle and ~45C being the highest after Prime95.

I knew I could unlock the extra core, so I did. Afterwards it worked fine, just went into the BIOS and turned it on. Put ACC on too or else it wouldn't work. In the BIOS is says it's at 38C (36C when it was X3). In the OS with Core Temp it says it's 78C!! The fan IS NOT high, it's running normally. It's running perfectly fine; It survives Prime95 (stopped it after a few minutes because I was nervous about the temps getting to 90C)

I'm not sure if it really has a bad core and it's just extremely overheating or if it's something else... Anyone know why it's saying it's so high?

SPECS:
-MSI 880GM-E35 (BIOS v1.1 [latest])
-AMD Athlon II X3 445 (AMD Phenom II X4 B45 unlocked)
-ATI Radeon 4350
-Windows Vista x64

 

[eightdrunkengods]

When the 555 BE is unlocked, the core temperature monitor does not work anymore. Do you know whether or not this it typical when unlocking your CPU?

 

[simon12]

Core temps will not read correctly with unlocked cores but the sensor on the board should read them OK. Do you know what temp you are looking at and what program are you using.

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

On my motherboard when it's still a Triple Core it will say it's at around 38-41C. When I make it A Quad Core it's around 40-45C; which seemed within reason. I was using Core Temp and I tried AID64 (Everest) to check the temps in the OS but I didn't know that once you unlock the core that they wouldn't show the correct temps.

I'm assuming that based on the temps in my BIOS that it's OK to keep it unlocked?

 

[simon12]

Try HW Monitor it should give you core and CPU temps.

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

Try HW Monitor it should give you core and CPU temps.

Ok I got that. Here's a picture of what it says. This is at idle, just starting up.

 

[simon12]

One on the TMPIN temps must be the CPU sensor on the motherboard to tell which one run prime 95 and its the one that goes up the most. Ignore the core temps on an unlocked CPU mine are all 0C and never change and were wrong before I unlocked anyway.

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

One on the TMPIN temps must be the CPU sensor on the motherboard to tell which one run prime 95 and its the one that goes up the most. Ignore the core temps on an unlocked CPU mine are all 0C and never change and were wrong before I unlocked anyway.

That makes sense. What temperature should I aim for using that temp? Because It was going over 60C and I don't think that's a good thing.. :3

 

[simon12]

Under 55C is perfect, under 60C is OK, you can run just over 60C if its only in Prime 95, if it goes over 65C then I recommend locking the extra core until you get a better cooler.

 

[eightdrunkengods]

My motherboard has two other temperature monitors when seem to be fine when the cores are unlocked. I use these two to extrapolate the core temp. One is maybe the northbridge (I think) and the other is an ambient temp monitor. Running in standard (not unlocked), I notice my core temp is always between the other two and never hotter than either one. I figure this is still true when my cores are unlocked.

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

Well the 4th core wasn't stable at all. It crashed when I did a stability test, and if I let it a Phenom II X4 and just turned off the 4th core it still wasn't stable. Looks like I'll just be overclocking it at a triple.

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

Best answer selected by IAreKyleW00t.