I highly doubt your CPU is broken. However, you can try finding the CPU temps using a Live Linux USB. If the Live USB reports sensible temps, it's probably a Windows problem. Answer from Deleted User on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/techsupport › cpu temperature incorrectly reported by hwmonitor.
r/techsupport on Reddit: CPU temperature incorrectly reported by HWmonitor.
May 18, 2021 -

HW Monitor is reporting every core of my CPU as 287 degrees C. Obviously this is incorrect and there would clear signs of an issue. Flames being the most tell tale sign.

It’s an old AMD FX-6100 that’s driving a Plex Server. The machine is working absolutely fine, feeding up to 4 1080p streams at once with seemingly no issues. The server is, and has been on 24/7 for almost 6 years except for the usual maintenance.

The question is does the CPU need replacing?

Also as the CPU temps are wrong and if the CPU fan fails would the wrong temp readings prevent the machine from automatically shutting down due to overheating? Now that would be a major fire hazard.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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Tom's Hardware Forum
forums.tomshardware.com › home › systems
Question - What are these temps in HWMonitor and are they too high ? | Tom's Hardware Forum
February 25, 2025 - Looking at the section titled "Lenovo 3741 (ITE IT8638E)" I can see that your 3.3v rail is showing 2.136v, your 5v rail is showing 3.333v and your 12v rail is showing 8.589v, so unless your board is misreporting those sensor values, and admittedly these aren't always exactly correct as compared to testing with a multimeter but they are never that far off, or HWinfo is for some reason reading wrong, you have a PSU problem and that could be affecting everything in the system. In fact, if those readings are correct I'm incredibly surprised it isn't shutting down or simply powering off. I would take a look at the same PSU system voltages readings in HWmonitor, just to make sure that it is reading the same or at least close to the same.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/overclocking › false reading on hwmonitor??
r/overclocking on Reddit: False reading on HWmonitor??
March 16, 2015 -

I overclocked my AMD 8320 to 4.00 ghz and ran prime 95 for 2 hours with a maximum temp of 73 degrees on load. Later on I played planetside 2 for 40 mins & I was getting ready to hit the bed. I logged out of the game and saw something really alarming!! Current CPU temp was at 55. Which was fine becasue I just got out of the game but the max temp was reading at 161 Degrees!!

Which is impossible because the Cpu should throttle itself down and turn the PC off before anything like that would ever happen. Hell my cpu & board should be fried if it went over like that.

My questing is it normal for HWmonitor give false reading? or am I missing something!!

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Linus Tech Tips
linustechtips.com › the workbench › troubleshooting
HWMonitor showing wrong CPU temperature? - Troubleshooting - Linus Tech Tips
February 15, 2015 - Hey guys, I just bought a new computer and as always I'm running some stress tests to see if everything is working correctly. I installed HWMonitor to see my CPU temperatures and they go up and down every second, and its not a single degree, its like 50-55-49-52-48-52 and I think thats weird beca...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/intel › is it common for hwmonitor readings to be wildly inaccurate on my cpu thermals? i9-13900k
r/intel on Reddit: Is it common for HWMonitor readings to be wildly inaccurate on my CPU thermals? i9-13900k
December 23, 2022 -

Just wondering, because I've run Cyperpunk on UltraRT and thermals sit anywhere between high 70s and mid 80s, and I can clearly feel the heat above my case if I touch it.

However, sometimes (randomly) when running not nearly as intensive games it will sit around high 80s and 90s on HWMonitor, and it is clearly not hot at whatsoever. I ran Diablo 2 resurrected and my GPU (RTX 3080) was at a comfortable 45-50, but the CPU was at high 80s, even 90 (again, not warm at all) .

I know most recommend using HWinfo, so I'm wondering if this is a common thing for HWMonitor. Thanks!

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AnandTech
forums.anandtech.com › home › hardware and technology › cpus and overclocking
HWmonitor only displaying 3 core temps and they look wrong | AnandTech Forums: Technology, Hardware, Software, and Deals
May 11, 2014 - Please note, however, that HWMonitor was showing all 4 cores, and all, at rest, at about 30C. Now it only shoes the following: TIMPIN0 = 31c TIMPIN1 = 25c TIMPIN2 = 42c Only 3 cores and not very consistent like before. Click to expand... Those are not core temps.
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Tom's Hardware Forum
forums.tomshardware.com › home › motherboards
HWMonitor Giving Me Wrong Readings? | Tom's Hardware Forum
January 11, 2017 - readings in hwinfo are what they should if you compare them with bios they are nearly the same could be a bad reading fro hwmonitor .
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Linus Tech Tips
linustechtips.com › computer hardware › graphics cards
False readings CPUID HWmonitor temp limit - Graphics Cards - Linus Tech Tips
April 8, 2022 - https://linustechtips.com/topic/1423452-false-readings-cpuid-hwmonitor-temp-limit/ More sharing options... Followers 1 · Go to topic listing Graphics Cards · how to pass fpu stress test of aida64 to avoid cpu temp over 91 degree? derekchan · 54 minutes ago Posted in Troubleshooting ·
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Linus Tech Tips
linustechtips.com › computer hardware › cpus, motherboards, and memory
HWMonitor temp readings wrong? - CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory - Linus Tech Tips
November 7, 2016 - According to HWMonitor: The current temperature as i'm typing now is the one shown here, while te maximum temperatures on both the MB and CPU are the ones that i gathered while playing the game Sven Coop for 15 to 30 minutes (and yes, even if Sven Coop is a Half Life game, for some unknown reason...
Find elsewhere
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Tom's Guide
forums.tomsguide.com › home › apps › apps general discussion
CPUID HWMonitor incorrect readings? | Tom's Guide Forum
February 9, 2019 - Try coretemp and see if it's reads closer to your mobo or HWMonitor. That should give you a better indication of which program is wrong.
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Overclock.net
overclock.net › home › forums › amd › amd cpus
HW Monitor is not showing core temps | Overclock.net
Originally Posted by Schmuckley HWmonitor doesn't show core temps for unlocked CPUs..use the tempins0-1 or whatever..
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Level1Techs
forum.level1techs.com › hardware hub › cooling
MSI Afterburner Hardware Monitor gives incorrect CPU temps - Anyone familiar with this issue? - Cooling - Level1Techs Forums
August 13, 2016 - You can see that Afterburner is giving a different CPU temp than the rest of the programs save for HWMonitor which is giving a similar result. This example is pretty tame, earlier I had Afterburner showing nearly +20C than the rest of the programs. I specifically care that Afterburner is wrong ...
Top answer
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The max temperature for many CPUs is listed in the 105-110°C range. But for long-term use, you’re much better off keeping things below 80°C in general and only pushing up to 85°C at the most

To make sure your software is giving you an accurate reading you could compare the results with those of another temperature monitoring application. There are several free lightweight tools to monitor your CPU temperature, one of which is Core Temp.

It would be advisable to check your heat sink to see if it has been dislodged, or that the thermal paste is still connecting the heat sink to the CPU, as running your CPU at that temp is sure to cause damage in the long run.

The GPU temperatures that are shown in your question are not in the danger zone.

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You're well into the range that can cause permanent damage to the CPU. Most consumer electronics (including CPUs) are not designed to operate above 85 °C for any extended period of time, and most will actually shut down when they get over about 100-105 °C. Provided you have a working (and properly sized) cooling system and are not somewhere with unusually high temperatures to begin with (40 °C or higher), you should not be seeing temperatures that high no matter how hard you push the CPU.

However, I'm inclined to believe something is wrong with your system due to that insane discrepancy between reported package and core temperatures. In particular, the possibilities that come to mind are:

  • The sensor isn't being read correctly and the core temperature is actually much lower. This is the best possible case, and it's easy to check (try a handful of other tools for reading these sensors. Everything else reporting similar temperatures does not rule this out though, because the drivers being used to make the reading may be bad (you can check that case by booting into a live Linux environment and seeing what it says the temperatures are. I know 100% for certain that Linux reports the temperature correctly on that model of CPU because the sensor interface the CPU provides has been around since the AMD K10 days and is very well supported by Linux).
  • The sensor isn't being read correctly, and the package temperature is actually much higher. This is extremely unlikely, because for it to be the case you have to have somehow managed to run a CPU with a 20 W TDP so hard that it got that hot. The only possibilities I can think of that would allow for that are running with no cooling system at all or running in an environment that was already unlivably hot for humans.
  • Something is wrong with one of the temperature sensors. It is not very likely, but it is still possible. If you've eliminated the two above possibilities, then this one can be checked by using a (good) infrared thermometer or (real) thermal camera to get an estimate of the temperature of the junction between the heat-sink and the IHS. If that reads back at close to 115 °C, then the package temperature sensor is bad (and something else is probably wrong with your CPU). If it reads back at close to the 66 °C being reported by the package temperature sensor, then either something is wrong with the core temperature sensor or the next (worst case) possibility is the case.
  • Something is physically wrong with the thermal junction inside the package between the IHS and the CPU die. This is the absolute worst case scenario, as it means your chip is essentially useless (because you quite simply cannot cool it well enough for it to be practically usable. This is also astronomically unlikely (actually, it's beyond astronomically unlikely, it's even beyond the unlikelihood of a SHA-256 hash collision with two randomly chosen files), but it's still technically possible. There's unfortunately no practical way to check this one if you've eliminated all the other possibilities, because delidding the CPU to manually check will make it irrelevant (and also require use of a completely different cooling system).
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Tom's Guide
forums.tomsguide.com › home › apps › apps general discussion
HW Monitor temps | Tom's Guide Forum
March 10, 2015 - well from what HW monitor has on ... they tend to get hot. there wattage is 220watt . ... Thank you for the info. Turns out that it is just HWMonitor that is reading it wrong....
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/buildapc › no cpu temperature in hwmonitor?
r/buildapc on Reddit: No CPU temperature in HWmonitor?
September 9, 2023 -

!SOLVED!

Hi I just upgraded from my i5 8400 to a i5 12400f and when I open hw monitor I don't see any temperatures , I only see the utilization tab under "Intel processor". Can someone explain what's happening here? I didn't have this issue with my i5 8400

Edit:I'm leaving this embarrassing post online so that anyone else with the same issue can see it

What you need to do is update HWmonitor

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Tom's Hardware Forum
forums.tomshardware.com › home › cpus
Cpu temps abnormally high in HWMonitor? | Tom's Hardware Forum
December 9, 2014 - ... Are you monitoring the CPU frequency as well? The Ghz. If that doesnt fluctuate, its probably an erronous sensor. The other things to bear in mind is: One of those readings isnt really "read", its calculated.One wrong value somewhere blows up the temp in proportion.
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Tom's Hardware Forum
forums.tomshardware.com › home › storage
[SOLVED] - temperature false ssd on hwmonitor | Tom's Hardware Forum
March 16, 2021 - NVMe SSDs report a "composite" temperature in addition to the actual sensor temperatures. 99C would be the real temperature of the flash controller's core, whereas 33C would be the composite temperature.
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Tom's Hardware Forum
forums.tomshardware.com › home › cpus
HWMonitor Wrong CPU Temperature Readings? CPU at 96C when it never goes above 55C in intense stress tests? | Tom's Hardware Forum
May 14, 2016 - and I have concluded its an inaccurate reading. As of today I was messing with my memory, I did a stability stress test to check stability. I left it to test for 45Min and I came back to see HW monitor reporting 96C temp for CPU at MAX, so is this another false reading?