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In the Sandy Bridge build I'm finalising, I'm trying to get an idea of what temperature readings to expect from this system, but I'm getting some odd readings all round.

When in the BIOS, the CPU temperature is about 50C soon after cold booting. I'm aware that processors are a lot of the time 100% busy in the BIOS (I don't know why though), and this expectation is reflected here by the temperature increasing to 60C while I watch it in the BIOS over a minute or so.

Board: ASUS P8P67 PRO. Using the ASUS AI Suite II, I get a reading that I'm a bit suspicious of, being 30C for the CPU (idle). The CPU fan speed seems to be a reliable reading of about 1000rpm while the processor is idle from all methods of checking it. Using the latest release of SpeedFan, I don't get a universal temperature reading, but four core temp readings of 25C each.

What should I expect from this CPU? What software should I rely on to get a reliable temperature reading on this board/CPU?

I always use Core Temp. I don't have an i7 yet, but I assume it's been updated with support for them by now.

The temperature doesn't seem unreasonable, depending on your system cooling - you don't mention what cooler you are using. My old Core 2 Quad Q6600 sits at 25-30 C at idle depending on the ambient temperature, going up to just over 50 C at load. This is with good case and CPU cooling though - Antec P190 and Thermaltake Ultra 120 Extreme.

I get 27-30c on idle and around 55-60c on my stock cooled, stock clocked 2600k. Your temps seem reasonable, I am using realtemp 3.67.

Thanks for the replies, I'm less worried now

It's just that with the Core i7-920, IIRC 50C idle was to be expected with a stock cooler and I don't think that temps are mentioned in TR's SB CPUs article.