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For the past two months, I have been investigating methods in getting my CPU to run cooler. My Idle temperature was always at 41 to 43 deg. C. Its an AMD 2100+ Palomino. On this Forum and others, I have asked which HSF was better for my situation and K7 mobo. I was closing in on the Cooler Master Hyper 6+, when I came across two software programs called, CPUIdle and Mother Board Monitor. After reading their specs. I downloaded and installed and configured these two programs for my K7 motherboard. Well, I am here to tell you that my Idle temperature is now sitting at 28 deg. C as I type this Post. For the most part, my Idle temp. is basically around 29 deg. C. Guess what, I stopped looking to get a new HSF. Just wanted to share this with anyone contemplating buying a bigger and better HSF. Have a good day.

those programs are software based temp sonsors, not a physical temp probe. They are a nice reference, especially to see if an alternate cooling solution is working effectively. However they are software based, and are not known to be very accurate.

The only true temp guages are physical temp probes (the cost of a quality temp probe would most likely cost more than the CPU that you are trying to keep cool..lol)

As far as your specific temps are concerned, 41C~43C is still a safe temp to run at, especially in an AthlonXP, which run hotter than Athlon64s

Well aside from using 4 programs to measure temperatures plus to physical sensor probes on the heat sink itself, I am pretty much convince that my CPU temperature has dropped significantly. Example: When the 4 different programs indicate a CPU Idle temp of 41 deg. C plus or minus 1 deg. and the sensor probes on the heat sink show about 100 deg F, because its only measuring the heat off of the copper mounting and then using these new programs drops the temps to 28 Deg C, per the 4 temp measuring programs and 78 Deg F on the heat sink sensors probes, it pretty much tells me that the CPU is running cooler, don't you think? To me, thats a substantial temp drop to indicate that these cooler programs are working. Thats good enough for me.

Thw point is that you physically changed nothing. all you did was install different software programs that reported your temps lower than the previous programs did. that just further indicates the obvious inaccuracies of software based temp monitoring

as i stated in my last post, they are useful as a reference to see if an alternate cooling solution is effective, which is what you did. I never debated that, what i said is that they do not indicate a true and accurate temperature (nor do cheesy physical temp probes)

in other words... the programs work to indicate temp changes, but not to represent actual temps.

and it doesn't matter if you use 4 programs or 1,000 programs... the fact is they are all software "programs" that use the same mobo sensors to report those temps.

Thanks KingCody for your replies. You're telling me what is wrong with what I'm doing, but you're also not suggesting a better method or how you would go about it. I'd like to hear how you would go about it in a practical way. Do I understand you correctly that the built in sensors on the motherboard are useless? That any CPU temp. measuring program is useless? OK. Now, tell me what is useful. Give me some positives. So far, all you given me are negatives.
Have a great day!

It appears to me that no program is accurate not even the bios.
There are yards of threads all over the net going either way.
Some may be close but update temp data slowly, others are quick and out right inaccurate to +/-10°.
Best I have hoped for is "a good base line" to decide what is or is not working (cooling that is).
I've looked into and performed alternative cooling measures,
from lapping heatsinks & cpu's-gpu's-chipsets w/ & w/o
peltiers, to liquid cooling, liquid emerson and in system ac.
Using everest ultimate, pc wizard 2k6 and my bios, I've yet to fry anything.
The real extreme is to isolate the heat producer and cryonically
seal and cool..
The scientific community does not use home/workstations to measure
anything. They use systems that have extensive R&D designed
specifically and calibrated for a single, reliable task.
So accuracy is not that important to me, just close will do..

Thank you SOcRatEs. I agree. For home use, close is good enough. I've visited enough websites now that basically are saying what you said. Even though my whole concern was for naught, because of the type and model CPU I have, I was still concern and wanted to know what I could do within reason. I now know and I am completely satisfied. Thanks for your reply.