Resolved Temps from Speccy Piriform

Trying to monitor the temps of my new AMD 8350 8 Core FX Black Edition with a stock fan
Installed Speccy to monitor but and I mean, but, I don't think I can trust those figures 24 C average, a bit hard to swallow. Motherboard is 29 Graphics 43
SSD 26, and WD 3TB 30. I can believe that, but the CPU I don't know about that.
Anyone use that program.
hawk22

 

The temps come from the sensors in the components. How good they are depends on the brand. Speccy just displays the values.

Temperature Monitoring

The free version of HWMonitor by CPUID would be an alternative you could look at for comparison with Speccy.

HWMonitor

Another is Core Temp.

Core Temp

Added note: I'm assuming you know to click cpu on the left side of Speccy and scroll down on the right side to see the temps for each core individually.

Correction: While the above is true, AMD FX series does not have separate sensors for each core and the core temp is a calculated value, not a physical measurement.

 

Thanks antik, installed Core Temp for comparison and same figures
Min 15 C Maximum 31 C.
And haven't taken out the empty HDD Rack yet to give better air flow.
hawk22

 

I should mention though, practically no load on the CPU

 

Bill, have a look in Task Manager in W8.1 > Performance. This will indicate how much work the cores are doing. My temps are 16° C idling and never get above 32° C on average work. Neil.

 

I am not sure I would trust that as 16° C = 60.8° F and it is a physical impossibility for conventional cooling (fans) to cool an object cooler than the ambient temperature of your room. The Laws of Physics and thermodynamics just don't allow it. "Wind chill" only affects living flesh.

I realize you live in the upside down part of the world, but is the room your computer sits in that cool?

My i7 with OEM cooling sits in mid 30s when loafing along but can almost instantly jump into the mid 50s when pushed, and actually hits about 62°C for a couple seconds during boot when I load up a bunch of stuff. But that drops almost as quickly back to the mid 30s.

In fact, my "reminder" that it is time to clean my dust/dog hair filters is when they touch and stay above 60° for more than a couple seconds. If they start getting close to 70° I go into panic mode, inspect to ensure all fans are still spinning and I then tear down my system to lug outside for blasting with my air compressor (the best way by far - with a suitable inline moisture and particulate filter, of course).

I use CoreTemp for my real time monitoring.

@hawk22 - since you also live in the upside down part of the world and you are now in the middle of Winter, assuming you don't have windows open, your temps are excellent but not suspiciously so.

I don't think an "empty" HD rack will affect air flow in any significant manner. At least with your temps, I sure would not worry about that. If you remove the rack, then you have to find someplace to store it, in case you want to add a drive 2 years from now. I would keep it in the case and look first to "cable management" to route and/or tie back cables to minimize impacting that desired front to back flow.

 

If you are interested, there is a long thread about idle temps on the FX 8350 dated Jan-Feb 2014 with information from overclockers and links to AMD sources. The meat of it is that the AMD "core temp" is a calculated number using a proprietary equation on an arbitrary scale measured in degrees, not a physically measured temperature.

AMD designed this equation to determine peak temp under heavy load, with an offset which equalizes at 45C. It cannot read idle temps or account for ambient temps correctly. It is quite common for AMD idle temp values to be less than ambient.

On the other hand, the "cpu temp" value is a physical temperature from a sensor in the socket. Because it does not get the benefit of the heat sink fan, it may read much hotter than the processor itself.

The processor is designed to throttle back when temperatures in the core exceed 65C, and there is a a safety offset in the equation, so monitoring the numerical "core temp" value would seem to have little practical benefit.

FX 8350 - Inaccurate Core Temperature

 

Ummm, no, sorry. Not exactly right. NONE of these sensors read actual temps or measure in degrees. These sensors are NOT thermometers but diode devices that conduct or attenuate the flow of electrons through the diode in one direction, based on the temperature "felt" by the diode. The resulting voltage is then measured and then reported as "a number ". That number is then translated into degrees by the monitoring/reporting program. That is how ALL temps in a computer are measured.

It is similar to your system RTC (real time clock). It does not keep track of days, years, hours, minutes, or seconds. Instead, it just counts the number of "cycles" (based on some "bus" frequency) that have passed and assigns a date and time to that number based on the last "Saved" setting in the CMOS modual BIOS Setup Menu. The is not a clock, but a counter

Accurate reporting of temps, whether for the CPU, chipset/system, drives, GPU depends on the sensor, the motherboard/chipset, what exactly the monitoring program is looking at. Often, these monitoring programs simply report what the chipset is seeing, as displayed in the BIOS Setup Menu under PC Health and not the device itself. This is why different monitoring programs don't always report the same voltage.

Umm, again that's not exactly correct. The sensor, being a diode, conducts voltage with the potential (amount of voltage) representing a value, which is then read by the CPU's on-die programming and is then "represented" in degrees by the reporting program. There is no thermometer in the CPU, or under it in the socket. Only things that conduct or attenuate voltage.

If you follow your link to the original post by Alex Cromwell, Senior Technology Director, Advanced Micro Devices he says NOTHING about "physical temps ". That was someone in the trail of quotes misquoting him.

 

There is a "sticky" at Tom's Hardware on "how to properly monitor your temperatures on your new AMD CPU/APU ". There is a link to AMD doc 49125 dated June 17, 2014. This time I will not attempt to summarize.

See Section 2.10 "Thermal Functions" beginning page 140 of doc 49125.

Understanding Temperature on AMD CPUs and APUs

 

You guys, obviously know a lot more about Temps than I ever will.
Because Core Temp, and Speccy's readings I was suspicious of, I had decided to have a look in the BIOS, my ASUS M5A99FX-Pro-R2 Motherboard has quite some setup in the BIOS, and while Core Temp was showing 24 C it was showing 43 C in the BIOS quite a difference but more plausible to me, because the FX-8350 is quite a bed warmer.
In the Overclockers world they all go for water, and the next model up does not even come supplied with a cooler, Water Cooling only.
I would like to know your opinions regarding the differences between the two.

hawk22

 

Hi Bill, Yes I agree with the idea of when you take out a hard drive rack, where do you keep it, and in my case can you find it again.
My Case is the Phanteks Enthoo Pro the best case I have ever had or seen and according to Phanteks Manual taking out 1 Hard drive rack will improve airflow and therefore better cooling. Cable Management in this case is out of the world.
PSU is on the bottom with a cover over it you don't see it, all the cables from the Hard drives and DVD go straight from the Motherboard out the back plate and you connect them from there out of sight.
There is a seperate spot at the back for the SSD, I am only occupying 1 tray and have 3 free, all the fans are connected from one modul at the back. It comes with one 240mm fan at the front and 140mm at the back and all with filters including at the bottom for the PSU.
Mind you it is a big case full tower. Is all set up for Liquid Cooling as well.
Dimensions are: 235mmx535mmx550mm.
I could go on and on about it.

hawk22

 

IMHO the stock heatsink and fan are more than adequate. Do some work on the computer and establish a baseline of what is usual and ordinary under load. After that, no reason to be closely monitoring temps unless something changes or you are getting errors of some kind.

When you are in BIOS, Windows is not running, so the BIOS temp is not comparable.

Great case with a well designed airflow. No reason to remove the rack.

 

I consider it a fact, not opinion. OEM coolers today are NOT the OEM coolers of 15 years ago and are more than adequate even with mild to moderate overclocking. And that is definitely a fact as I see it all the time, including with this 3.4GHz i7-3770, pushed to 4.1GHz using the OEM cooler holding my CPU temp at 39°C.

It is important to remember it is the case's responsibility to provide an adequate supply of cool air flowing through the case. And it is the user's responsibility to (1) properly configure case cooling, (2) ensure proper cable management to minimize interfering with that flow of cool air, and (3) to keep the interior clean of heat trapping dust.

The CPU fan need only "toss up" the CPU's heat into that flow of cool air and OEM coolers have no problem doing that.

Electronics are designed to operate within a "normal operating temperature range ". Cool (comfortably within that normal operating range) is essential, but cooler does NOT automatically mean better, more stable, or longer lasting.

So, while removing unused drive racks may "technically" lower temps a degree or two, if that 1 or 2 degrees of extra cooling is that significant, I would say you have other heat issues that should be addressed first. But with the cooling options that particular case provides, I cannot see where case cooling would be lacking enough to where 1 or 2 degrees is of any significance.

 

That makes sense to me Bill. Thanks

 

No problem. Sadly, there are many who are convinced OEM coolers are lousy coolers and that is just not so.

Those folks clearly have blinders on (I think you call them blinkers down under) - they have tunnel vision, stuck in yesteryear, because it makes no sense for CPU makers to provide inadequate coolers. The makers know very well overheated CPUs cause, if nothing else, performance issues by causing the CPU to toggle down in speed to cool off. And worse, they know a overheated CPU will have stability issues. That is, an overheated CPU will lock up or totally shutdown as a self-protection feature - typically right in the middle of something important that will surely upset the user.

So why would any CPU maker include a cooler that is inadequate when they know users will be gaming, editing graphics, and "fail" to keep the place clean of heat trapping dust - KNOWING that will upset their customers and result in COSTLY returns, or customers going elsewhere for their next purchase? That is just not good or logical business sense. Both AMD and Intel are reputable companies, not run by idiots.

That would be like putting the radiator for a 4 cyl Toyota in a big V8 pickup truck. They would not do it.

And again, there is the issue of warranties. You risk voiding your 3-year warranty if you use an aftermarket cooler on a CPU that came packaged with a supplied cooler. I understand that many enthusiasts don't care about warranties and that's okay! I don't have a problem with that, as long as (1) they understand consequences of using aftermarket coolers and (2) they don't assume others don't care about their warranties and (3) they present the true facts about OEM coolers when they are pushing (and particularly when advising) others to use aftermarket coolers. And especially if they are advising others to get a 3rd party cooler without first addressing the need for adequate case cooling. Because that is just pi$$-poor advising.

Note both makers sell CPUs without coolers packaged in the same box, at a cheaper cost, and typically with only 1-year warranties.

 

Hi Bill, yes I would think so as well, I have had after market coolers before, but really could not say that I would have noticed any real differences.
Maybe if you push your CPU with overclocking to its very limit, that you may need after market coolers, but I have never gone that far, I only do mild overclocking nowhere near as far as you are going with your Intel.
At this very moment I am running Photodex Pro Show Gold, transforming my Photos into a Video Show to present on TV, The program is showing that it is using all 8 Cores of the CPU and it is not overheating, so to me that is enough proof that my cooling is adequate.
I do have one of those enormous 15 cm CPU fans, I haven't used it in quite some time due to its physical dimensions, it is good more quiet as the fan speed is lower, but on the other hand you can't get to the RAM sticks and it weighs in at nearly 1 kg and that is a lot of weight sitting on the CPU.
Once this new machine is fully set up, I might try and get some ideas from you on how to overclock it mildly just using the motherboard features.
hawk22

 

Bill, do you remember the Everest Ultimate Edition that had a password key to enter when you set it up? If you have a copy of that it will display the Temps in the Taskbar while you work. Neil.

 

No sorry Neil, I know I used to have Everest for years and I always liked the program, I had thought they went out of existence.

 

You can definitely see real differences in some cases. But what I am saying is even if you see a drop from 50°C to 40°C, even though that is a big drop, you will not see any difference in performance, stability or the life expectancy of the CPU. All you get is bragging rights.

Also, many reports of improvement are greatly exaggerated, or inaccurately explain the full reason. For example, you often can achieve 4 - 5° improvement with the OEM cooler just by replacing the OEM TIM (thermal interface material) paraffin pad with a properly applied layer of aftermarket TIM. Yet many so-called reviews fail to state they used aftermarket TIM with the aftermarket cooler when they compared temps with the OEM cooler still using the OEM TIM.

Yes, I remember Everest (before it became AIDA). Everest "used" to be a very good system information and hardware monitoring tool. It was good at correctly matching sensor to label - a common problem with SpeedFan.

But it is no longer free - even for home, non-commercial use. So IMO, it is not worth downloading even to try it out.

There are many free alternatives that will put your temps in your system tray. Your motherboard utilities disk should have a monitoring program (or check for a more recent version on your motherboard or PC maker's website). If none, I use and recommend CoreTemp for newer Intel and AMD CPUs, or RealTemp for Intels. SpeedFan is a great and popular alternative, or you can try Motherboard Monitor. Open Hardware Monitor is also becoming very popular.

I use Speccy (from the makers of CCleaner) to verify the temperatures (as it tends to be accurate matching sensor to label), then edit the label in the monitoring program.