Too Many Different Win10 Temperatures
In my last post, I wrote about cleanup as a technique to get PCs to cool off a bit. Since then, I’ve found myself in an investigation that shows determining PC temps can be a tricky business. In fact, using three different toolsets, I get three different sets of temps for my Lenovo T520. Thus I find myself grappling with too many different Win10 temperatures. Which one’s right? I can only lean on research from Tom’s Hardware to find the most accurate and reasonable temp monitoring utility. Based on recommendations from Tom’s that turns out to be Martin Malik’s HWiNFO utility. They recommend that users grab the tool in its portable form, and run it in sensors-only mode. Otherwise, you’ll end up wading through lots of other good system info that’s irrelevant to temp tracking.
What Does Too Many Different Win10 Temperatures Mean?
Alas, it means that the tools I picked to check temps didn’t agree with each other. That’s why I went looking for a recommendation as to which one — namely HWiNFO — bears the closest relationship to real temperatures measured with a probe thermometer. Look at this side-by-side comparison (SIW Pro left, HWiNFO center, Core Temp via CPU Usage Gadget right).
Notice that SIW Pro and HWiNFO are close, but Core Temp is WAY OFF
[Click image for full-sized view.]
For those who don’t want to click the image, and see it in readable form, here’s a tabular version of some of what appears in the preceding graphic (the important temps):
| Core 0 | Core 1 | CPU Pkg | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SIW Pro | 66 | 65 | 67 |
| HWiNFO | 68 | 69 | 68 |
| Core Temp | 36 | 32 | N/A |
As you can tell with a single quick inspection, Core Temp is running around 33 to 34 degrees Celsius lower than the other two utilities on my T520. So now, I auto-correct for this gap by adding 32 to what I see it displaying. The funny thing is, HWiNFO agrees within 1 degree Celsius with Core Temp for the i7-6700 CPU on my production desktop. I’m going to have to conduct a PC-by-PC comparison on the rest of my machines to see how things diverge. All I can say at this point is “Very interesting!”
Putting PC Temps in Context
The afore-linked Tom’s Hardware item includes an interesting chart that it describes as “the nominal operating range for Core temperature.” It also emphasizes that “Core temperatures above 85°C are not recommended.” and “Core temperatures below 80°C are ideal.” Here’s the chart:
Note that my recommended and observed ranges are well within tolerances.
Check out the rest of CompuTronix’s post to the Tom’s Forum thread. Definitely worth reading.