Making Sense of Temperatures in New Build


Recommended Posts

So I built myself a new gaming PC recently and after installing MSI Afterburner so I can run a custom fan speed curve, everything seems to be running nice and cool for the most part), but "Speedfan" has a couple extra readings that I don't know what to make of.  Attached is a screenshot that contains Speccy, Speedfan, and Afterburner in the back.  I had just finished playing DOOM for an hour or so before snapping this.  You can see that the GPU is at 44 celsius, the CPU is at 61 (Speccy updates slower than Speedfan, so I trust Speedfan's reading), the hard drive is 35 and the motherboard is 47 celsius, which tells me the "Temp1" reading on Speedfan is my motherboard sensor.

 

However, I'm not sure what the two "Temp3" measurements are.  Here's the parts in the build.

 

MSI 990FXA motherboard

AMD FX 8370 processor with the "Wraith" cooler

MSI Radeon RX 480 GPU (8 GB)

Corsair Spec-02 case with two fans

Thermaltake 650 watt power supply (Thermaltake SMART Series SP-650PCBUS)

 

Could those readings be from the power supply?  Could they be from the CPU "socket" (I've heard of some motherboards that have separate sensors for the CPU and the socket)?

Capture.PNG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speedfan is "usually" wrongly interpreting temperatures, or fan speeds. To get a better Idea, use several programs. As above, HWINFO, or HWMonitor should give you a better idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After doing some googling, best answer I can find is that it's the chipset, and that makes sense because the 120mm fan I bought for the top of the case won't fit between the massive wraith cooler on the CPU and the top of the case, so the only air moving over the chipset heatsinks is the ambient flow between the front fan and back fan, and whatever spillover there is from the CPU fan.  Somebody on one forum I found said that MSI told them that as long as it stays below 100 celsius then it's fine, but that seems a little ridiculous and I'd like to keep it under 80, which it seems to be doing for the most part.

 

Since this is my first gaming build and I have to actually care about cooling, I'm still learning a few things.  I just found these tools in the "MSI Command Center" where I can create custom fan profiles for the 2 existing case fans and the CPU fan, so I'm going to adjust those so that they kick up to higher speeds at lower temperatures to increase air flow through the case.  My chipset should not be hot enough to cook chicken, lol.

Capture.PNG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe I've got it figured out.  The MSI Command Center kept resetting the fan speeds because the BIOS had its own separate settings, so I just went into the BIOS and there's a whole tab where you can set target temperatures, fan speeds, etc. right in the BIOS.  Been playing BF1 for an hour or so now and the chipset is the hottest thing in the case and it's holding steady at 70 celsius.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.