Weird temps with my OC?

[Whovian98]

Hello all. I'm overclocking my build and had a question. I am Overclocking an FX6300 with an ASRock 990FX Extreme 3 motherboard. It is stable, and has been for quite a while. After recently re-installing windows and finally getting around to installing AMD OverDrive to monitor temps, something curious happens. It is telling me I idle at 40-50 C, but when I run Prime95, the temps go down to 23-30 C, which is what it did before my Windows re-instillation. So, any ideas why this is happening? Is AMD's OverDrive inaccurate or something? Any help is appreciated!

 

[Vexillarius]

Overdrive shows the thermal margin, not the temperature. If it says 60 degrees that means you are 60 degrees below the maximum safe temperature. As temps go up the thermal margin becomes smaller and Overdrive shows a lower value.

 

[Whovian98]

Oh, alright, that makes so much more sense. Wow, that is quite the mistake I've made. I apologize, that is quite a rookie mistake. Thank you so much for the help. Do you happen to know what it is considering the maximum safe temperature?

 

[Vexillarius]

Eh, Overdrive is weird like this. It's the only program to work this way as far as I know. AMD says it's more reliable.

AMD has completely moved away from using max safe temps in their documentation (instead they now use thermal margin) so it's a bit difficult to say what the max safe temp is. On Bulldozer it was 61C, and apparently it's a bit higher on Piledriver chips like yours. When thermal margin reaches zero the CPU will start to throttle. Anything below that is safe, but I'd stay below 65C (temp, not thermal margin) anyway. I have no idea to what kind of thermal margin that corresponds, you'll have to find out by trial and error.

 

[Whovian98]

Alright, do you know of a good, reliable software to monitor temps? And thank you so much for the help!

 

[Vexillarius]

No problem, glad to help

HWMonitor and HWiNFO are both very good. HWiNFO can be a bit confusing if you're new to this because of how expansive it is, so HWMonitor might be a better choice. Lots of people also really like Realtemp and Coretemp, which are even more basic, they only show CPU temperature while HWMonitor and HWiNFO also show a myriad of other sensor data.

To be safe I'd put Overdrive beside it at first, just to make sure the other software is accurate.

 

[Whovian98]

After downloading HWiNFO and looking through the sensor data, it seems to agree consistently with OverDrive in the amount the temps change. It appears OverDrive sets the max operating temp at 70 C. And I'm loving the amount of data HWiNFO is giving me, its extremely helpful.