Temperature monitoring software Options

[Sikret]

What's the best and most recommended software with the following features?

1- Monitors the CPU's temperature
2- Gives alarms in time if approaching the risk borders.

And

3- Automatically shuts down the computer if the user ignores the previously sent alarm.

[Shed]

You could try Motherboard Monitor.

I have software like that which came with my motherboard, too (though I don't use it). You may also have BIOS settings.

[Sikret]

Where can I download Motherboard Monitor software? Is there a link to download it?

I have "Everest" software of Lavalys Inc. It does monitor and shows the temperatures but doesn't send an alarms if things go wrong.

And another question:

How can one find out the highest safe temperature for a given CPU?

Thanks!

[Baronius]

http://downloads.pcworld.com/pub/new/utili...up_/MBM5370.exe

Just google. There are other download locations as well. I'm not really familiar with this topic, so Shed might know a better link, perhaps with a newer or another version etc.

[Sikret]

Thanks for the link, Baronius! It was very helpful.

The software claims to have all of the three functions I had mentioned; but in practice, it only has the first two ones. (Perhpas the third function only works for some particular mainboards.)

It monitors the temperatures and sends an alarm at a temperature which is to be defined by the user. The problem is still that it is the user's job to determine the alarming border.

How can one find out the highest safe temperature for a given CPU?

[Rabain]

The temperature limits are available online if you do a search on google using your CPU type and the word temperature. Otherwise you may have received documentation with your PC outlining these statistics

e.g: http://www.gen-x-pc.com/cputemps.htm

You should never reach your max temperature unless you are doing one or both of the following:

1. Overclocking your CPU by a very large amount

2. Placing your computer directly adjacent to a heat source such as a fire/electric heater/furnace/hot chick etc

[Sikret]

The temperature limits are available online if you do a search on google using your CPU type and the word temperature. Otherwise you may have received documentation with your PC outlining these statistics

e.g: http://www.gen-x-pc.com/cputemps.htm

Very helpful link, Rabain! Thank you.

You should never reach your max temperature unless you are doing one or both of the following:

1. Overclocking your CPU by a very large amount

2. Placing your computer directly adjacent to a heat source such as a fire/electric heater/furnace/hot chick etc

A third possibility is an unreliable CPU fan

During the last three weeks, I changed my CPU fan twice, but it still has problem. Each time I fix a problem, a new one appears. I guess my computer needs a remove curse spell!

[Sir-Kill]

you might want to take your power supply (psu) and have it looked at with an oscilloscope.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Feb 11 2006, 01:26 AM

[Sikret]

Last time I changed the fans, I didn't do it at home. I asked a repairing center to do it for me. They claimed that they had also replaced the computer's "power supply" with a new one. But to be honest, I'm not sure if they have done what they claim. Computer repairmen are very infamous in my country. They are known for making false claims to charge more money. And there is nothing one can legally do against them if such things happen. (I just noticed that they have fastened one of the wires of the CPU fan to its socket by using liquid glue!! The socket had been loose and they had not even bothered to change it; instead, they have used liquid glue.)

One of my good friends is a computer engineer, but unfortunately he is currently on a long journey. I think the best I can do is to wait for his return and to ask him to see what can be done. (I just hope the liquid glue will resist long enough.)

[underdog]

Not necessarilya gauranteed check but look at the fan in the power supply if it's a new power supply it will have a new fan and the fan should be relatively clean, if the fan is old there is usualy quite a bit of dust accumulated on the blades of the fan, and deciding wheather there is a lot of dust or not is a little subjective at best.

I have seen manufacturers glue connectors down like that so that is not necessarily anything bad, you say the connector was loose before, changeing the connector would require desoldering and resoldering a new connector to the MB I wouldn't want a repair shop doing that to my MB usless they have good/high end (de)solderding equipment, it can be easy to mess up a circuit board with the wrong equipment and not being good at soldering.

Is the fan running on the CPU, is the only other cooling in the computer the CPU fan and the power supply fan, if so you may need to install another fan or two, depending on the size of box you have there should be room to install another fan to increase air flow through the case, it don't matter how big or efficient your heatsing/fan is if you are blowing hot at it, so more air through the computer may fix it also.

[Sikret]

It's not the connector on the MB which they have used glue on. It's another terminal which sits on the connector of the MB. It has three slots (holes) on each side. The three wires of the CPU fan go into the three slots at one side and then the terminal sits on the MB connector through the three slots on its other side. The problem was that one of the slots (on the wires side) was loose and couldn't keep the wire firmly. They used glue to keep the wire fixed in the slot of this terminal. I fear that if this glue fails to stand and keep the wire, the CPU fan will stop working.

Thanks for your wise suggestion of adding more fans to the computer. It's a good suggestion which I will keep in mind specially for my new computer. I have two computers. One of the is in my office in the university. It's a good computer with no problems. The problematic one is an old computer I have at home. I plan to buy a new and powerful computer within the next few months and I will surely add more fans to it. I just need this old computer to stand long enough before I manage to buy the new one.

[underdog]

After re-reading this 3 times, the pins in those connectors should have a small flange of metal that hooks the inside of the connector (the one on the end of the wire) preventing it from backing out, not sure why it would have failed, unless they had a fan with bare wires that they attached to the old connector, i don't see much problem with glueing the wire into the connector, the three wires are black (ground) red (+12V) and yellow (tach)
the fan will work without that tach, it just reports to the MB the speed of the fan.

You should be able to find some 80mm fans usually cost <$10USD you would want to put the one in the back blowing out, or if you put on in the front it should be blowing in, I usually check the temp of the air coming out of the power supply fan, if it seems excessivly hot (thats a mater of opinion as to what's too hot) that's a sign it could use some more air flow and cooling, my older win98 computer has a PS fan, back fan, front fan, cpu fan and video card fan, and it makes quite a bit of noise.

[Sikret]

Yes, as you guessed, the wires of the fan are bare. And it is the red wire which is glued.

The more I think about it, the more frustrated I become of the poor quality of their work and the lies they told me. They could replace the fans at my home, but they told me that the CPU is melted and stuck to the fan and they need to take the whole computer with themselves. Later, I understood that it was just a lie they told in order to take my computer to somewhere else. The CPU had no problem and they could easily replace the fan in a few minutes.

You may laugh at how naive I was to trust these people, but it was just yesterday that I tried to use a floppy disk and I discovered that the disk drive was not there in its place. The computer has no "drive A". They have stolen the drive. My modem also works much slower which indicates that they have replaced it with a different (and second handed) one. As I wrote earlier, computer repairmen are very infamous here in my country for doing such thievery. I had heard it but couldn't believe that it was so terribly true.

Two of my photo albums have also disappeared from my hard disk. They were just pics of natural scenes. It seems that they liked those photos but instead of making a copy of the pics they have moved them (or perhaps they have accidentally deleted the albums).

I think the whole incident was a very precious experience for me not to trust such repairmen in the future.

[Sikret]

I also noticed that they have changed my modem's driver. The original modem driver installed on my computer was "Broadxent DSI V.90 PCI DI3635". They have changed it to "Creative Modem Blaster V.90 DI5663". (The modem itself is and was a "creative" modem. Its model has not changed either, though they might have replaced it with a second handed one which has no bearing on the driver's compatibility).

Have they changed the installed driver to an inferior one? If so, does anyone have the setup file of the former driver to send it to me?

[Vlad]

Not reading the whole post, this should be in the BIOS of your motherboard unless your motherboard is very old. Enter the BIOS and look for temperature and fan control features there.

[underdog]

http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/
selecting modems/networking>analog>modem blaster v.92 PCI
will get a list of drivers from Creative, the broadxent is listed as a driver
there is also a 5633 driver there also, so I would probably use that one instead.

[Sikret]

Thanks for the link!

However, it seems that the site doesn't offer you any chance to change your driver from modem blaster to broadxent. It only grants you the option to update the driver you already have.

Moreover, my previous driver was "Broadxent DSI V.90 PCI DI3635". The broadxent which is mentioned and supported in the site is Di3631.

I searched the web for "Broadxent DSI V.90 PCI DI3635" and found lots of useless pages.

The problem is that I'm not even sure that broadband drivers such (as the broadxent which I previously had) are better than analog drivers (such as modem blaster).

Untrustworthy repairmen have unnecessarily uninstalled my broadxent driver and have replaced it with an analog modem blaster. Have they worsen my driver to a lower level? Is it worth searching for the original one to install it back?

[underdog]

how about this?
http://list.driverguide.com/list/company1436/index.html
they have both broadxent and creative, leading me to believe that creative rebranded or used a broadxent modem to make their modem.

If you want to change the driver you probably will have to uninstall the old driver, and reboot it should say if found new hardware, then when it asks for drivers point it to the new dirver files you downloaded, you would have to extract them first somewhere, that sould work, you have to make sure you have the correct driver, the driver in a win modem is all the logic for the modem it has no built in logic at all, with the wrong one it will do nothing.

do you know if you have the same piece of hardware in there as what you used to have?
If you really do have a different modem then going back to the old modem driver could render your modem unusable.

BTW, what country do you live in?

Where I'm at in America, you get a dishonest company doing things like that they won't be in business for long as it won't take long for word of mouth to get around on the dishonest things you are doing, and you won't have any business anymore.

[Sikret]

Finding the appropriate webpage for a specific purpose is an art. I had searched but had failed to find that page. Thank you.

Yes, I'm sure that the modem is of the same model (though they may have replaced it with a second handed one, I'm not sure.)

I am now downloading the broadxent driver pack. I should see whether that specific version exists in the pack or not.

PS: I sent you a PM, too.

[Sikret]

I downloaed the broadxent driver and installed it (without uninstalling the one which was on my computer). It said that it was installed and asked me to restart my computer, but even after restarting, it is still the old driver which works. When I go to: Start>control panel> Phone and modem options

The name of both drivers are there, but in front of the broadxent one is written that it is not present. When I click on the new driver the "properties" button is not available (it's gray).

The icon of the new braodxent driver is now on the system tray, but it is the other driver which works.

The other modem is attached to COM5 which was strange to me. Why they have used COM5 I wonder.

Anyway, do you think that the new driver didn't work because I didn't uninstall the other one before installing it? I didn't uninstall the other driver because I feared that if I uninstall that modem blaster driver, I may fail to successfully install the new broadxent one (especially because COM5 was used) and I may remain without access to Internet.