Except for the 5V it's still in the 5% range. Also, I wouldn't trust the on-board measurements too much.

If the CPU temperature is not too high and you don't experience other problems, I wouldn't worry about the voltage reading too much, probably the onboard hardware monitoring readouts are not very accurate.
To be on the safe side you could get a multimeter (a cheap one will do) and measure the voltages yourself.

Ok thanks for the replies guys 😀 I just needed a bit of reassurance! Anyway I was reading the Asrock manual and i found a screenshot of the system bios showing 1.629V for a 2.4ghz Northwood P4... I wonder why this is? maybe the sensors are not all that great with these boards?

I think my CPU temps are perfectly acceptable around 35C idle and around 50C at full load. It's using a Coolermaster heatsink + fan with a copper base and some AS5 thermal paste..

The four digits pretend a higher accuracy than there really is.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

The four digits pretend a higher accuracy than there really is.

I think all mobo manufacturers should really check these things before shipping them! If there was an option for me to change the Vcore then i would have lowered it... and if what you said is true then that means i would be undervolting the CPU 😳

I've filled out an online technical support form with Asrock.... hopefully they will respond 😀

Also i have noticed when checking the voltages i will get -5V and -12V readings flash up on the screen and then dissapear? they are low readings around 0.80V.... is this anything to worry about?

Sounds like a BIOS problem.

(that is if you are watching the voltages in the BIOS setup)

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

(that is if you are watching the voltages in the BIOS setup)

I was watching them in Everest as the bios only shows Vcore, +3.3V, +5V and +12V. I think it only displays the "-" voltages when there is activity on them... if they stay at 0.00V then they are not displayed.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I wonder why this is? maybe the sensors are not all that great with these boards?

Your assumption is correct - Temperature and voltage sensors built onto mainboards often consist of the cheapest parts available, and are designed in the simplest way possible.
For the mainboard manufacturers it is not important whether the hardware monitoring puts out exact data or not, as long as the results look somewhat plausible. They simply check it off on their feature list (to be printed onto the package). The price for a halfway decent solution would rise the price enough to lose sales, so they go with the cheaper alternative.

I've used a lot of boards where the hardware monitor readouts were obviously wrong. They are only useful as indicators in case of defective components, but their absolute data is rather worthless.