My findings on AMD CPU software temperature monitoring

[carzacc]

TL;DR: Monitoring temps on an AMD CPU using software shows weird results

 

I'm using an A10-7850K at stock speed (stock volts are between 1.4 and 1.45).

I recently bought an NH-L12 cooler because I felt like the stock cooler was inadequate and I wanted a cooler that blows air towards the motherboard because I don't want the poor MOSFETs on my A68HM-PLUS to fail because ASUS didn't bother putting an heatsink on them and those passive little heatsink here in Italy are pretty overpriced atm.

The load is: Gaming with VSync on on games like F1 2013 on low-med for the stock cooler and for the Noctua NH-L12 Folding@Home on Full for a couple of minutes(I normally fold on normal)

When I had the stock cooler on, with a REALLY aggressive fan curve (it was surely audible) the sensors on HWiNFO were something like this with around 25-29°C ambient:

 

CPU 0: less than 20° C at idle, never more than the low 30's under load

CPU 0 Package: more than 50 at idle, over 90°C under load

Temperature 1 (that is the same as CPU on AI Suite): 39-43 at idle, the max I saw under load was 60°C

 

With the NH-L12, with a fan curve that is higher than ASUS's own Turbo preset(similar in fan speed % to what I used with the stock cooler) (I don't really care about noise and the Arctic F9 PWM exhaust fan is louder than the fans on the Noctua cooler anyway) with around 27-31°C ambient:

 

CPU 0: at idle often it doesn't even show in HWiNFO, and even when it shows it only reads less than 1°C, under load it only gets to the 20's, way lower than ambient

CPU 0 Package: 45 at idle, max 74 under load 

Temperature 1: 29-35 at idle, max 45 under load

 

What's wrong with all of this stuff?

The BIOS seems to go for the Package, along with Cam and Speccy

Afterburner goes for CPU 0

AI suite goes for Temperature 1

 

Temperature 1 seems to be what they call "dedicated heat detection area" here https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/A68HMPLUS/overview/ since it slowly ramps up and down and is under the section dedicated to the motherboard in HWiNFO.

CPU 0 is bull****, it makes NO sense whatsoever and reads WAY too low, I imagine what it would read to someone like a Canadian at idle in the middle of winter with a custom watercooling loop LOL

CPU 0 Package ramps up and down with load very fast but it reads very high, so, also thanks to the Internet, I guess it is reading temps closer to the socket, where the temps should be higher since all the cooling happens on the other side of the CPU.

 

I might be wrong, and most of you are probably way more experienced than me in this field, so please don't be too aggressive when you tell me how wrong and dumb I am

[Morgan MLGman]

Or just use Speccy and have a proper read that's accurate with AMD OverDrive? ;-;

[carzacc]

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Or just use Speccy and have a proper read that's accurate with AMD OverDrive? ;-;

Overdrive reads a thermal margin that imo is unrealistically high

[carzacc]

Speccy goes with CPU 0 Package

[m0k]

yeah amd boards are fking weird
my parents A10-6700 on a stock cooler 
CPU Package seemed to be the right number 
idle around 39-40, 
load around 60-65ish

confirmed with AI Suite (Asus pc)

[carzacc]

Just now, mok said:

yeah amd boards are fking weird
my parents A10-6700 on a stock cooler 
CPU Package seemed to be the right number 
idle around 39-40, 
load around 60-65ish

confirmed with AI Suite (Asus pc)

My AI Suite goes with Temperature 1, that looks to be a dedicated ASUS probe

[Morgan MLGman]

4 minutes ago, carzacc said:

Overdrive reads a thermal margin that imo is unrealistically high

Speccy turns the thermal margin around and shows it in normal celsius degrees. 70 degrees C is max for AMD FX-8350, and the same thing was shown by AMD OverDrive. I owned one for a year, this is accurate.

[carzacc]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

Speccy turns the thermal margin around and shows it in normal celsius degrees. 70 degrees C is max for AMD FX-8350, and the same thing was shown by AMD OverDrive. I owned one for a year, this is accurate.

It's 70 C also for my A10-7850K but Speccy+Thermal Margin go over 100°C, otherwise what you say seems true, since when the thermal margin goes down, the Speccy reading goes up, but those two add up to over 100°C

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, carzacc said:

It's 70 C also for my A10-7850K but Speccy+Thermal Margin go over 100°C, otherwise what you say seems true, since when the thermal margin goes down, the Speccy reading goes up, but those two add up to over 100°C

Weird... I've had it in perfect sync, when thermal margin was reaching 0, Speccy read was reaching 70, but that was on an FX-8350, maybe the APUs are different and have different thermal margin due to an R7 GPU that's built-in the chip?

[carzacc]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

Weird... I've had it in perfect sync, when thermal margin was reaching 0, Speccy read was reaching 70, but that was on an FX-8350, maybe the APUs are different and have different thermal margin due to an R7 GPU that's built-in the chip?

I'm sure I read somewhere that the max operating temperature is like 70.5 or something like that, but I don't remember because it was around a year ago

[Nena Trinity]

Use AMD Overdrive, anything else will show it wrong!!!

[Sintezza]

The package tempsensor is the only sensor you should look at.

AMD cpu´s dont have individual tempsensors per core.

If your cpu is aircooled, then its pretty normal that on idle it sits arround 10°C ish above ambiend, depending on ventilation.

 

[carzacc]

14 hours ago, Sintezza said:

The package tempsensor is the only sensor you should look at.

AMD cpu´s dont have individual tempsensors per core.

If your cpu is aircooled, then its pretty normal that on idle it sits arround 10°C ish above ambiend, depending on ventilation.

 

 

15 hours ago, Nena360 said:

Use AMD Overdrive, anything else will show it wrong!!!

So my CPU was getting into the 90's and AMD OverDrive thought it still had 20°C thermal margin?

[harrynowl]

AMDs temperature is calculated by a formula based on power condition rather than a digital sensor in each core.

 

Some software will report the socket temperature, some will report this calculation. The calculated value isnt very accurate at idle which is why some people see their AMD CPUs idling 15c below room temperature.

[Nena Trinity]

2 hours ago, carzacc said:

 

So my CPU was getting into the 90's and AMD OverDrive thought it still had 20°C thermal margin?

Never had that issue... o3o