Significant difference in core temps? (i5-430M)

I just got my HP dm4t and one of the first things I did was download HWMonitor and I was just wondering if it was strange for one core to be higher than the higher by 10C. Here is the pic

 

Never seen something like this (only 2-3C difference in my system). I suppose that integrated GPU does not have its sensor, right?

 

Not all motherboard sensors are understood correctly by the usual monitoring applications.

Before 'looking' at the readings set the monitor app to load at startup (e.g. put the shortcut in programs startup), then shut down and leave several hours before doing a cold start in a cold environment.

Now

Which sensors showed a minimum reading not far above the ambient temperature - they are possibly good

Which sensors are not increasing in a slow and steady fashion as the laptop warms up - they are probably incorrect

Which sensors are giving physicaly improbable readings (e.g. in a dual core processor at either idle or running a stress test application are the temperatures starting at the same or similar low value and tracking together (accuracy may get better as the temp rises)) These things should be true because physically each core is thermally connected a common cooler assembly using materials that should not allow the cores to move more than a 1- 2 degrees apart. Because of monitoring programme algorithms for temperature a 2 -3 reporting offset is also possible.

So if your cores start at room temperature and track each other up and down within 2-3 degrees under the same load that is normal.

Where any of these things are not happening - yet the system works fine the problem is likely to be monitoring not the actual temperatures

 

It's normal for these chips to have different core temps at idle. Put some load on it with a stress test like Prime95 and I'm sure the difference will be a lot less. Your idles temps seem really low btw. Maybe try Hwinfo32 and see if it gives you a different reading.

 

I think it is a monitoring problem, then. When I started it up this morning and let it sit for a few minutes (ambient temp of about 21C) one core fluctuated between 26-31C while the higher one is between 37-39 and changes a lot more often.

 

when you use hwmon you have to set the config file with the correct thermal spec for the processor.

i.e. CPU_0_TJMAX=90.0

90.0 = value you need to change based on your processors thermal spec