Conflicting Temp Reports

Maybe check the tempratures in your BIOS

That will really only give me idle temps, my CPU drops temp fast when you take the load off of it, I guess I could reset if I had to. For now I turned my clocks back to 3.0Ghz instead of stock 3.2Ghz.

Ok wait a minute, I just fond something, under the AMD Overdrive Board Status tab it lists the temps of all 4 cores AND a "CPU Temperature". While the cores are all showing around 60 (running Minecraft+Server+Firefox) the CPU temp is just showing 55C. It matches the temp reported by PC Probe II.

Ok, so I guess now the question is which temp should I go by? The temp of each core or the CPU Temp?

Well the CPU temp is usually cooler than the core temp, its up to you which one you want to go by really, on my cpu manfacturers site they go by the CPU temprature. i would probably just use the core temp though as that is the hotest, say your cpu is rated at a certain temprature then the core temp will obviously reach that first, therefore you will have a certain number of degrees saftey margin of sorts. But its up to you really which one you look at, you could just look at em all. CPU temp is more like the overall temp of the cpu and core is the individual cores.

Thanks for the advice, I've done some more research and it seems like a lot of people have their 955s with stock cooling running over 62C on core temp. In my experience AMDs are pretty tough, so I'll probably return to stock speed and just use it for now. I'll probably order a Hyper 212 in the next few weeks, never hurts to be safe, anyway with a 212 I should be able to get a decent overclock, too.

I hate it when CPU documentation is sparse/non-existant.

Ye same here, it would be useful for them to provide tempratures and stuff in the documentation that comes with it, think mine only came with a crappy little leaflet about how place it on the motherboard. I will also be getting a 212 in the future, the stock coller with my 2600k isn't that good, i get like 70C on core at 100% load on all cores, and i don't fancy running it at that temprature for 5 hours + at a time to convert videos.

Yes AMD CPU do have conservative TJ maxes. Intel CPU have TJ max's of 99c, and I would be hesistant to go anywhere near that limit even with a intel CPU.

I just finished playing some Homefront, core temps went all the way up 68C, while the socket temp peaked at 61C. Regardless of which temp I should be looking at, a Hyper 212+ is on the way. Man I'm glad I got a full tower xD.

Thanks for the input.

Great thing about getting the 212 is that you will be able to OC the 955 to about 3.8 GHz while still getting sub 55c temps at full load.

Got my 212+, had to reseat it once, but temps are much better. I've got my 955 at 3.81 stable, the cores go to about 65C under Prime95, but I don't typically run it that hard. Socket temp never goes above 55C. Still better than my temps at stock speeds with my old cooler.

Sounds good but temps are tad high, did you use a descent amount of thermal paste? Direct touch coolers like the 212+ need more paste than the copper contact plate designs to fill in all the grooves.

Pretty sure I used enough. I doubt I have enough left in the tube for another application, I might have to order a tube of Arctic Silver and reseat it again. I had to turn the voltage up, its at 1.4v now. Anything much lower and its too unstable.

The voltage bump probably explains it, I was lucky and my 955 got to 3.8 on stock voltage (1.35). Your temps are fine for 1.4v.

What settings are you using for your overclock? I just turned up the multiplyer, didn't really mess with the bus speed much. Would that make for a more stable overclock? Turning up the bus speed as opposed to the multiplyer?

If you don't have enough thermal paste left for another application you used way to much

Had to reapply twice

Yes I actually did, 18 multiplier and a 210 base frequency. It ups my HT and memory by a bit, but its minor and perfectly stable. Try that with either a 1.35v or if thats not enough, than a 1.375v (if your board does .025 increments). Technically its slightly lower than 3.8 GHz, but I am rounding up. And I could OC my 955 further, but I like being under the thermal limit a by a descent margin (on a hot day I don't go over 56C core), I don't like stressing my components  

I tried fiddling with the CPU Frequency and still didn't get anywhere, can't get a stable 3.8 without going over 1.4v, which pushes my core temps up around 65 under prime95. I just used the default settings for a 3.6Ghz overclock, now cores don't go above 56C, using 1.375v.

Speaking of which, I noticed the reported Vcore in HWmonitor to be significantly lower than what I have it set to in the BIOS. For instance right now MWmonitor says my Vcore is 1.34 but in BIOS I had it set it 1.375.

Yes most of the programs I use don't read my voltage settings properly, bios setting is accurate, HWmonitor and cpucore are off for me too.

And sorry about the stability issues, 955s are binned lower than the rest of the X4 black line up, so you never know the capabilities if each individual chip