Cpu Temperatures

My processor is running really high at about 50 degrees celsius while playing a game, and 28-30 at idle(checked speccy which someone told me to download from here) The fan is very loud and can hear it from far away. Have an AMD phenom x4 965.

 

Hi Yohomes,

50 degrees during load is not abnormally high for a phenom x4. I'd say that your temps are actually pretty decent (if using the stock heatsink and fan), and there is no urgent cause for alarm.

My dual-core E5400 Runs around 55 degrees at peak load using Intel burn-In, and idles around 36 degrees with a slight overclock on stock voltage. As 4 cores tend to run slightly warmer than 2, Yours sound about right.

The Maximum operating temperature for your phenom x4 965 seems to be 62 degrees celcius I believe. So if your peak temp spikes aren't topping 55-60 degrees, you will be safe.

have you run any type of stress-testing software like prime95 or OCCT to see what kind of maximum temps you're dealing with? most stress-tests will generate more heat than a game, and will show you if you need to upgrade your heatsink and fan or not.

If indeed you do need to upgrade your heatsink and fan, there are a few good coolers under $50 on newegg or other places that will chill your CPU out a bit.

 

Also, Speccy is not the best for giving you proper temperature readings IMO, but it does the job. It's better for identifying hardware components and specifications.

Speedfan gives you more information on temperatures, and has line-graphs to chart your temperatures or voltages over a given time period. Plus it can control fan-speed, and give S.M.A.R.T. data readings and perform hardware tests.

or CoreTemp gives you good detailed info about your temperatures with minimum, maximum, and current temperature readings to get an idea of where your temperature peak.

Both are good, i personally use SpeedFan as I use it to control two of my fans and give my temp readings simutaneously.

RealTemp is also another recommended temp monitor. feel free to browse screenshots of them all and find one that suits you best. And preferably one that gives temp readings as close to those in your Bios as possible.

 

The problem with Speedfan is it frequently fails to put the proper label to sensor. So it may put the System Temp under the CPU label. Motherboard Monitor, another popular HW monitor has similar problems. Both allow editing the labels so with Everest or HWMonitor, from the makers of CPUID, you can verify which sensor goes to which label.

I much prefer CoreTemp - it seems to properly identify sensors, plus there's a nice Desktop gadget for it.

That said, regardless the program used, they all get the same raw data from the same hardware sensors. So whether it be Speccy, SpeedFan, or CoreTemp, if the sensor is reporting 47°C, then all the monitors should say 47°C. If different by more than a degree or two (to account for sampling rates and times - which may vary by several seconds), then something is wrong and time to verify with a 3rd monitor - perhaps the one that came on the motherboard's utilities disk - if you have one.