Question : Problem: safe mainboard temperatures

i have recently built a pc with the following mainboard:

MSI 875p neo-fis2r.
it has a zalman flower CNPS6500B-AICu Silent Pentium IV CPU Cooler.

i also have 2 fans in the power PSU and a side case fan.

my CPU runs nicely at 28C  and my  case is  25C BUT my mianboard says it is running at 64C... is this too high? why is is so high and would further fans help?
if it is a safe temperature i would rather leave it alone.

additional info:
pentium 4 2.8 ghz 800fsb
psu is 450w
geforce fx 5600 ultra card
akasca cooling cables
soundblaster 5.1 soundcard
all cables are neat and tidy

thanks

stephen

Answer : Problem: safe mainboard temperatures

Hello,

Unless I've missed it (and I apologise if I have) then it seems obvious, from a cursory glance, that either there is a problem with the sensor/s or the system reading the wrong one/s. For example:

Pentium 4 boards should give a reading from the internal chip sensor and I have never seen one running at 28-31C on normal cooling; my overclocked and frankly poor batch P4 chip is at 37C as I write this - that's not even load. Your Zalman cooler has a rated max C/W of 0.30, your chip should output around 70W, and your room temperature is 25C, so your max temperature should be in the 50's. 64C is not a good temperature for a P4, but 60C temps. are very common.

Unless something is really wrong your case will NOT be 64C. It should always be below 40C and to be honest with decent cooling never more than 3-5C above ambient room.

Your Northbridge shouldn't be 64C either, but possible. You may want to check the thermal paste on the Northbridge as sometimes they really don't apply it correctly - but remember it can be annoying checking it and there are warranty issues.

If you use MBM (as mentioned in chicagoan's link) then read the instructions/forum faq's and change the sensors used. If this doesn't help then you may have a faulty board/BIOS e.g. on this (my current) board the mainboard temperature is always 25C i.e. it's wrong.

Looking at the MSI BIOS page there seems to be a BIOS fix for the temperature reading; http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_detail.php?UID=434. Remember - make sure that you know what you are doing before you update anything.

Finally, if you sort this out you should get a max load temperature in the 50's for your P4 with this cooler, so check that you applied the thermal paste correctly and that it was decent stuff such as Arctic Silver.

Regards
Dalziel

PS: You could try a tool like CPU Burn (http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/) to raise the CPU close to max load and see what temperatures change, and to what. But remember this is called CPU Burn and if your CPU is at 64C then it is too hot anyway so....BE CAREFUL.