I was wondering what do all of you use to monitor your CPU temperature? People over at other forums say that the BIOS temp is a load temp......

And they also say programs such as ASUS Probe are inaccurate compared to programs such as MBM (Motherboard Monitor).

Cheers

hmm.... Motherboard Monitor


...not much more to say

I've been using the temp monitors included with Vcool, since I'm running that anyway. I ran it and MBM simultainiously for awhile, but stopped it since it's readings were redundant to Vcool. They were provided exactly the same temps. (Which makes sense since they were reading from the same sensors) The only sensor Vcool lacks is a hard drive temp, however. So if that's important to you I'd suggest MBM, or perhaps the dedicated HDTemp to monitor that.

I use MBM5 but will usually install AsusProbe just to verify temps.

BIOS temps are definitely NOT load temps. BIOS temps in Win NT-based OSes (Win2000, WinXP) will be higher than "in-Windows" idle temps because WIn NT has a "halt" command built into the OS. When the processor isn't doing any work it is idled. That is why you see higher idle temps in the BIOS than in Windows. There are 3rd-party apps for Win9x that do this same thing.

I've been using MBM5 for quite awhile now. The features are great, and it has support for a good variety of temperatures and fans. I'm currently running an ASUS A7V8X motherboard, and MBM5 is able to report 3 different temperature readings (CPU, BIOS Chipset, and a 3rd temperature I'm not too sure about).

Any rate, there's a really great feature that you can use to output temperature data to a log file at regular intervals. This can be used to monitor the temperature-time distribution, for instance, when you start doing some heavy duty number crunching. You can actually just graph these numbers and see how your CPU responds. This is especially cool for people with Asus MOBO's, becasue of the Q-FAN technology. If you're into control systems, you can see how well (and how fast) the motherboard responds to intense conditions.

I also use MBM. I have found that with my mother board the HLT command does not result in cooler temps without running cooling software. I am curently running VCool and this lowers my idle temps by about 22*F over what I see without it. I am running Win XP.

Digidoc 5 with the flat thermal sensor taped down so that it's touching the core of my duron, with a thermaltake copper shim sitting on it with a hole cut into it so the wires don't interfere with the CPU core/ HSF contact
(sorry just had to be different)
oh yeah and VCOOL

I use Speedfan ( http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php ) , that besides monitoring my CPU , System and GPU (i have a thermistor i can place whereever i want) can also monitor the temperature of my drives and most importantly lower the speed of the fans to maintain a temperature I set.

This works excellent and is more effective, easier and cheaper than making a fanbus or moving wires to supply the fans with 7 or 5 volts.

This way the fan speed and noise lowers when I surf the web , read my mail .. etc (normal desktop work) , and this is when I need lownoise.
When gaming it will increase the fan speed and noise , but it matters less because the sounds from the game will hide the computernoise.

My cpufan is actually shut completely off right now because the CPU is nearly idle while surfing, running at a nice 25 degree celcius ( I have a P3 600E @ 810 mhz that I undervolt to run cooler) - I have it set so that when it near 29 degrees (the max setting I allow it in Speedfan) , it will start to rotate faster, gradually increasing in rpm until it runs at max speed when it reaches 29 degrees.
Everything else than full load will not make my CPU-fan run at 100%

I use gkrellm for Linux, which makes use of the lm_sensors libraries.

I use the (über ugly) ITE smart guardian thing which came with my Soltek motherboard. Doesn't have any features at all, and I only occasionally use to check my temp. I'm pretty confident in my cooling skillz

I use CPUCool. It puts all the information you want in a little window in the corner of the screen. So it's always there to check out, but it's not in the way of anything. It has some cooling options as well, but I haven't gotten to trying those out yet.

I use TyanTemp, but it only works on the duallie Tyan boards.

Digitaldoc 5 with the flat sensor (plastic shaved so it is just covering the edge of the wire) with the contact touching the side of the core, copper shim with a slot ground so the wire will route without causing the heatsink to lose contact with the processor core.

I use an outdoors digital thermometer probe thermal-compound-glued to the heatsink (a Zalman).
It's close enough to spot disasters, and it's totally OS-independant.

It's actually very close to the temperatures VCool reports.

That's pretty ingenious Mirar. And it works during bootup, hibernation, or with the monitor off!

The only drawback is that I have to change the battery once a year or so.
I'm going to add a voltage regulator for it one of these days instead of changing the battery, and draw the power from the computer. Then it wont work when the computer is off...

There you go, making a simple solution complicated.

I use ASUS probe,
It gives me basic information but I have two thermal probes with displays on the front of my computer to give readings. My SK-7 temps read about 4C lower than ASUS reads, but it will also read my video card heatsink temps. Works great for me (yeah, I have to replace the batteries once a year too!)