I3 3220 + hyper 212

i personally think the unsoldered ihs of ivy bridge is the cause of this, intel chose to use tim under ivy bridge cpus ihs unlike sandy bridge

Its because it doesn't generate a lot of heat, the i3 is 55W, the 212 can probably cope with 200W, the stock cooler is also oversized.

if you had a 3570k and was overclocked, the stock cooler would be at it limit, the 212 would have a lot of room to spare and you would see more of a difference.

for a start, there is no point in using an aftermarket cooler on an i3, since you cant overclock it and it doesnt produce much heat. You should also be aware most motherboards have fan speed control, if the hyper212 is running on its lowest fan speed or set to auto, the fan may not increase in speed till it hits at least 50C, therefore temps may be no different. you have nothing to worry about anyway, its far from overheating.

so, is everything normal?? including the difference in temperature from both cores??

i do know that the i3 doesn't need the hyper but i got it when i was using the Celeron G530, not for the temperature, but for the sound, the stock cooler from the celeron was annoying, and now that i have the i3 i decide to use it  

but the reasons that makes me wonder if the temps are normal is because the hyper drop the temperature from the celeron from 32 to 19 so i was expecting something similar with the i3, that and the reviews from amazon and newegg where some people say that the temps are 25-30c on idle  

The temp on the low core is impossible, actually. There's no way it would be lower than ambient with an air cooler (your case temp appears to be 29-30C, and I imagine room temp isn't much lower than that (maybe 24-26C)). The general rule is that your idle temp will be 5-10C warmer than ambient using air cooling, with the lower temps achieved using a top end cooler.

That sensor is definitely wrong.

Other than that, all looks well.

so you think the problem is the sensor? can i fix it?

the drivers are up to date, and i updated the bios last week to add support for ivy  

It's not really something that can be fixed, you just kind of put a band-aid on it by using a temp offset. I would say +15-20C would be about right.

It's just calibrated wrong, but there's no way to recalibrate it at the hardware level, that I'm aware of.

using the intel processor diagnostic tool, the temperatures between the cores are more "realistic"



so, there's nothing i can do to be sure is nothing wrong with the CPU? although i never heard of someone returning a CPU for overheating....is that even possible?

Eh, there's nothing really wrong, other than the (apparently) faulty sensor. As long as you remember that and take it into account, it's not really a big deal.

The CPU itself is just fine.

Semiconductor thermal sensors are highly non-linear, particularly at low temperatures.

Calibrating thermal sensors on a CPU would require warming/cooling the CPU to specific temperatures on a test rig and reading sensor data to map the response curve. This is a time-consuming process that is much beyond most people's abilities and if Intel bothers doing it at all, they probably only do so at critical temperatures such as where they want thermal throttling and shutdown to occur, both of these being over 90C.

At such higher temperatures, thermal diodes become much more predictable so it is quite possible that Intel simply relies on physics rather than bother with any formal chip-by-chip or calibration.

In other words, can't fix it. The CPU's thermal sensors were never intended to be accurate, at least not until temperatures reach levels actually worth worrying about.

Ok, thanks to all of you for your help, is good to know that the CPU is fine, since is brand new i didn't know if it was defective or not  

I think i'm gonna keep using the hyper 212, although the stock cooler from this i3 is more silent, on full load the temperatures are lower  

Again, Thank you guys  

Best answer selected by accio_fawkes.

just an update, today i built a new pc for my brother, using my old celeron g530 and i decide to test the i3 on the new motherboard to see if the heat sensor in mine was the cause of the difference on the temperatures....and no, the temps are the same on the new pc, 14-16c on core1, 35-38c on core0, then i put back the celeron on my pc and it was at 18c on core0, 19c on core1....

so, i guess the sensor that doesn't work as it should is the one on the i3 CPU....bad luck i guess