Placement of temperature monitor sensor leads

Just a curiousity question.

I recently bought a nice case that has a little read-out for CPU and HDD temperature sensor readings. Meanwhile, the Asus Probe utility that came with my motherboard reports CPU and MB temp.

I tend to believe the Asus probe is accurate, it presently says:
CPU=44C, MB=38C

Where my leads in the case read:
CPU=38C, HDD=31C

The ambient room temperature presently is 23.6C

Certainly none of these are any cause for concern. I'm pleasantly suprised at how cool it's running whether it's 38 or 44. I'm just wondering if there's any way to get the CPU closer to the 44 I believe is correct.

The instructions were merely "tape the leads to the heatsink and hard drive" ... which is basically what I did. The hard drive one is a no-brainer, but placement at the heatsink was a bit weird. The whole heat sink is pleated and I'm hesitant to literally "tape" anything on it. So what I did was fed the lead in between two of the fins of the heatsink then taped it to the heatsink mounting clip. It's gently touching the fins of the heatsink but not literally taped on.

But I'm obviously getting the temp of the heatsink, not the CPU.

Just wondering how others go about placing these leads.

As I said, certainly not anything critical. I've had the box running for a week straight since I built it and it shows no signs of any temp problems.

I just got my stuff for my new system which will have the temp sensors and stuff too. This will be the first time I've ever messed with them. From what I've heard though, the best place to put the sensors is basically where you seem to have them. Inbetween the fins of the heat sink, toward the bottom. I'll have to see how much my readings vary after I get things setup. If it's any closer than yours are, I'll let you know how I set mine up.

Yeah, that's the best way I heard too, in between the fins of the heatsink.

Have also heard of some attaching the probe to the back of the cpu, no quite sure how that would work, but I think it was trials with older processors so wouldn't try it with a new pc !

Ya know, mine is off even more than yours is. Asus probe for me says that it's 52C, and the lcd on the front says 36.3C. Will have to check my sensor and see if maybe it poped out of place. 36 is what the asus probe says the mb temp is.

Mine's survived the torture test temp wise with a recent heat wave and I left it run 24/7 the whole time. At one point the fan kicked into high gear for quite a few hours but the ambient temperature was pretty high in the room itself. The report from the motherboard utility itself wasn't reporting higher than 50C though. With a room temperature around 35C at the time, which is toasty for us humans ...

It's mostly just a toy I guess. You can see it go up when I run CPU heavy tasks, and the hard drive gets warm with a lot of activity, such as a software install, but I guess everything really is "cool" ;-)

The safest place to put your sensor is on the fins like you said, but as close to the cpu as possible. But because the heatsink is disipating the heat from the cpu the temps will never be accurate....just a guide.