Safe CPU temps?

[Amagh]

So this may come across a little bit amateuristic... But how reliable are the CPU temp measuring tools that fly around the internet? (Things like Speedfan, HWMonitor etc)

 

'cause as someone who's kind of OCD about keeping my hardware as cool as possible even at the cost of noise, this kind of bothers me.

I'd love to know if I'm causing any damage to my chip, but I dont know which of the monitors to trust.

I'm running an Athlon II 860k OC'd to 4.3ghz at stock voltages. And I've slapped a second 120mm fan to it for a push/pull config

The cooler in question

 

I just dont know which one to trust. HWMonitor shows the package temperature peaking as high as as 91 degrees under load.

 

However Aida64's stress test shows the CPU (Indivitual core temps excluded) not reaching any higher than 50-60 degrees. (Indivitual core counts hover around 40 during gaming)

 

And finally there's Speedfan... Showing something The only things that change when the CPU is taxed is Temp 3 which is around 50-60 degrees under load (Same as Aida64) and "Core" which hands around 40 degrees (Again, same as Aida64)

 

Which one of these is the one I should pay more attention to? Aida64 or HWMonitor? And if it's the latter... Should I be concerned that the CPU can hit as high as 91 degrees underload?

[aeroencychris]

Are all of these programs testing the exact same stress test? Not very clear.

I would be surprised if you got 50-60 on an AIDA stress test overclocked.

Edit: I generally use Core Temp or MSI Afterburner to check temps but from my experience they all give the same values.

[Amagh]

Hm. Now that you mentioned it. You made an interesting point. Running the Aida64stress test (CPU+FPU) for about 5 minutes yielded the same 54 degree CPU and ~39degree core temperatures. But I was monitoring CPU-Z the whole time, and noticed that the chip ran at 4ghz, with only occasionally turboing up to 4.3ghz. Curious about this I fired up Overdrive and noticed that the multiplier was indeed only at 40... Despite the fact that it should've been at 43. I'll need to doublecheck after I reset the multiplier to 43.

[Amagh]

So after another (meager) 5 minute run, this time at 4.2 ghz (I just couldnt get it to stay stable at 4.3 without touching the voltages, which I refuse to do. These are the kinds of temperatures I was recieving.

 

Should I still be concerned? I swap out my thermal paste every two months With the recent swap being two weeks ago. I've heard people say that running the mid 70's is "Okay" but the idea of running that high absolutely terrifies me.

 

So much so that while common sense says no. I might actually consider replacing my current fan with an AiO liquid cooler.

[mbryant]

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2595487/amd-athlon-860k-max-temp.html

[Amagh]

That is interesting. So stressing the CPU to peak and capacity and letting it run there for a couple of minutes shows that the thermal margin on Overdrive is around 28 degrees before I should start seeing thermal throttling. Holy smokes, that's way more than I expected.

 

Thanks for clarifying that up. I always thought the thermal margin was the limit at which point the system shuts off to prevent damage to the chip