My PC was frequently hitting 60 degrees under load and nothing I did seemed to help.
I recently got a new graphics card. It worked fine while gaming but when I booted my PC the display was flickering until windows loaded.
I found that I needed a BIOS upgrade to fully support the new graphics card. I did it and while the display dosen't flicker anymore, look at the effect it had on the temperature.



Can a BIOS upgrade have such an effect on the temperature or was the previous BIOS simply not reporting the temp properly? How do you explain that?

Yo-

Here is a great and free utility that you can download to double check your temps - and get info on a ton of other things too-

http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php

Enjoy-

Mike

The temps in PC Wizard match the old temps.

Yo-

And those were the bios reported temps and pcwizard is reporting from your operating system-

Little trick - launch pcwizard - then minimize it - your stats will be in the upper right hand corner of your screen- also you can change between c and f temps in the 'tools' section-

Mike

What is the problem? Those seem like decent temperatures.

Thats what i'm saying. It used to hit 60 degrees under load and after a BIOS update it's in the high 20's. I want to know how that could happen?

Obviously since the bios upgrade the temperatures aren't being displayed/detected correctly, or they weren't being displayed/detected correctly before the bios upgrade and they are now. I know that is a socket 939 motherboard, what model processor are you running? What type of cooling do you have in your system?

MSI RS480M2-IL, Athlon64 3000+, stock cooling, 2 additional 80 mm case fans.
How do I know which temps were correct, the ones with the old or new BIOS?

If you can, reseat the HSF with some Artic Silver 5 or other high quality thermal compound. 60C is too hot for that chip, or really any proccessor.

That dosen't answer my question. Was the temp actually 60C or was the old BIOS reporting it incorrectly? I need to know how I can accurately measure my CPU temp.

There is no way of knowing if the displayed temperature is correct unless you attach a professional temp probe between the cpu die and the HSF.

"The temps in PC Wizard match the old temps." So even though the new BIOS is displaying high 20's now, pc wizard is still @ ~60, correct? The thermal spec for most AMD processors is 70C so if your hitting 60C under load your cpu will still probably last years and years (unless you have it under load 24/7). What does PC wizard report when idle?

It might be possible that the old BIOS was putting the chip under load when the BIOS was open. Thus you were seeing load temps in the hardware monitor. I have a Asus board and in my BIOS I see load temps, not sure if MSI is the same. Maybe the new BIOS isn't putting load throught the CPU? Does that make any sense?

If the 60C still bothers you, you can upgrade to aftermarket HSF for under $40. I recommend the artic cooling Freezer Pro 64.

I would never look at the BIOS for the temps. Older motherboards would not report the right values, with sometimes a 10-20C difference either that or they measured the socket temp!

I use EVEREST to get direct readings from the CPU.

60C for an Athlon64 ? That is quite hot for an A64. I have an Athlon64 3200+ and it never goes over 50. You might want to double check if you properly aligned and installed the heatsink correctly. If it were an old Athlon I would say they ran pretty hot, but for an Athlon 64 that is hot. I can even overclock my 3200+ to 3800+ and would get nowhere near your temps

@ varunmehta - What is the temperature of the room your system is in?

Room temp is about 30C max, usually less.

@adict2jane: Maybe I expresed myself wrong. Everest, PCWizard and the BIOS all show nearly the same temp. The difference arises when the BIOS is changed to a higher version. All i'm askin is that was the old BIOS wrong or is the new one wrong.

Damn that's a hot room! Do you have spaces in your case for more fans? It wouldn't hurt to add more fans anyway.