X2 3800 overclocking... confusing temps...

[SEALBoy]

Hey everyone...

I've been building PC's for several years now, but this is my first time overclocking. I have an AM2 Athlon 64 X2 3800 on stock cooling with an ECS C51GM-M motherboard. I've got the CPU running stable (I think) at 2.25GHz (x10 multiplier) and my 1GB Centon DDR2 533 RAM at CPU/8 (280MHz). Timings on RAM are 4-4-4-12.

My system is built into a spacious Ultra Aluminus case. I am currently using the onboard video without any expanion cards. I have a DVD-RW drive and a single 160GB Seagte HD. My PSU is a 500W Ultra X-Finity with a 120mm fan on the bottom.

I have an air funnel attached on top of my CPU fan which pulls cool air from the outside (~65F). Apart from this and the PSU fan, I don't have any other fans.

I fired up SpeedFan to take a look at my temps. This is what it showed me:
CPU Fan RPM: 3250
Temp1 - 45C(idle), 62C(load)
Temp2 - 32C
Temp3 - 25C
HD0 - 43C
Temp1 - 40C
Core - 30C(idle), 47C(load)
The single-value temps didn't change with load.

I'm wondering what these temperatures actually represent. I know HD0 is my harddrive. I suppose Temp2 and Temp3 are video and system temps. But do I have 2 values for Temp1? And why does only one of them increase with load?

I assume my core temp is my actual CPU temp. But isn't a bit on the low side, considering my lack of cooling? I'm considering keeping this overclock if Core is my CPU temp. However, if Temp1 is my CPU temp, I'm gonna back off.

Sorry for the long post, didn't want to leave anything out. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[monkeymanuk]

I'd be worried about the Temp1 load value, seems a bit high. This might be mobo chipset temp, but I've not seen them monitored before

I find that 50c is the highest I want any component temperature to reach in my systems.

Surprisingly athlons run very cool. I've built 3 systems recently with single core athlons and I tell you they dont seem to warm up, I mean the heat sink is at room temperature all the time.

You should get to 2.4Ghz without any real problems, just make sure you reduce the HT speed accordingly and set you memory multiplier accordingly.

Don't really like guessing at the others, have you read the manual?????

 

[bwduty]

I know this is a really old thread, but I'm wondering if you ever figured out what those temperatures represent. I have an identical mobo/cpu setup and since it's starting to get fairly old want to pay more attention to the temps to preserve it as long as I can. I haven't done any kind of overclocking but I recently did a partial rebuild and had to replace the thermal gel, and I want to make sure everything is working properly. I'm also concerned about the GPU because the build in GPU fan seems to be struggling. I don't want to put any more money into this box unless absolutely needed since it's the third box down on the totem pole, but I'd really like to get a better idea of what kind of shape it's in.

Like you I downloaded SpeedFan, but I'm not sure what the various monitors are actually monitoring. SpeedFan still doesn't have our board's configuration on the user uploaded presets. I downloaded a preset for a similar board but I'm pretty sure it didn't assign the values right, so now I'm managed to confuse myself even more. If you ever figured out what's what please let me know!

 

[bwduty]

I had a huge post written about my findings, but Tom's Hardware took me to a "register" screen when I tried to post (even though I am currently registered AND logged in) and erased my post.

To sum it up, I ended up downloading Everest and it monitors everything I need and already has it all labeled properly.

 

[one-shot]

I had an X2 3800+ and I never let the temps go above 58C. It idled around 35C and load in the mid 40s.