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Today I built myself a low/mid range gaming rig, nothing complex just an i3 2100 with GTX 460. Everything went fine and I got Windows 7 installed. I installed Speccy (http://www.piriform.com/speccy) to get some system info and to my surprise it reported my MoBo temperature was fluctuating between 80 and 90 degrees Celsius while idle =S (112 - 130 Fahrenheit). All other components are running between 20-35 degrees, so it doesn't seem to be an airflow issue.

I rebooted into BIOS to check there, but it reported the MoBo was only 25 degrees which didn't seem right since it shouldn't have cooled that quickly...should it?

So I looked on the Asus website and found their diagnostic tool and ran a stress test. Amazingly the MoBo temp dropped to 68 degrees during the CPU part of the test, and 78 during the GPU test. As far as I can tell the fans did not increase their speed during this test. I am at a complete loss why this happened.

Is it possible that there is a bug in Speccy? What other tools can I use to get the MoBo temp? Everything I can seem to find only does CPU temp.

EDIT: Also, no components on the MoBo are hot to touch after I shut it down, which seems weird to me.

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1 Answer

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I think the sensor just misreporting. Don't care about it.
Also: The only thing you can do to cool a mobo is the use of passive/active chipset coolers.
Which voids the warranty.

So even if it overheats with time, just let it do so. When it dies, return it to warranty. (Adding additional coolers will void the warranty.)

ps.: But as I said, that must be a bad sensor/weird readout. Try other softwares like Speedfan and HWiNFO.

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That's what I thought, but why would the BIOS report fine? I'm not worried about the MoBo dying since it has warranty, could an overheating MoBo damage other parts too though? – PeterW Oct 8 '11 at 18:57
Nope, the others parts won't get any damage. An ASUS mobo died on me back then, a Premium (P5N32? something like that.. back in the Pentium D era), nothing happened. Mobo got replaced, everything else went fine. – Shiki Oct 8 '11 at 18:58
The bad report is due to the non-standard ACPI/BIOS. Manufacturers tend to 'break' the standard. That's why a lot of computer won't come back from sleep on Linux, can't even go to sleep on Linux. Senors reporting -128C and so on. Sometimes, a different software with a different method can read out the correct temperature. But you shouldn't worry about it. I mean ... it won't overheat. Never. Your CPU or GPU will get hot MUCH faster. Even after a lot of days of full load, the bridge will be only moderately hot. Nothing to worry about. – Shiki Oct 8 '11 at 19:00
(For example: The Intel Atom board I have got no cooling. The CPU that is. It's REALLY hot, I mean it burns my hand. Yet it's fine, it is designed to be run at this temperature. Of course your bridge won't ever get THIS hot. This is just a mere example. (Also, look at passive GPUs, they can withstand about ~110C of heat. My nVidia 8600gts got ~120C one time, that's when it started to slow down, the performance degraded until I quit from the game. But no damage or anything. These things are designed for the expected heat they will take.) – Shiki Oct 8 '11 at 19:01
SpeedFan is reporting that the CPU and the AUX are both at 80 degrees, while HWiINFO is saying that the CPU and MoBo are at 30 while the AUX is at 80. It seems like the AUX sensor being wrong is a common issue so I guess it is fine. Thanks for the help guys. – PeterW Oct 8 '11 at 19:18

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