The objective of this short article is to address the question of whether motherboard voltage sensors are as inaccurate as it is claimed, or whether they are closer to the real thing than we all believe.

It seems that the general consensus amongst enthusiasts is that motherboard sensors should never be trusted when looking for accurate readings of voltages and temperatures. This lore is abundant on forums, in chat, and even in articles themselves. Failing to find any conclusive evidence of these statements, we have to wonder if anyone has actually ever tested this.

Being in a position where we have access to a wide variety of systems, and a digital multimeter, it was a no-brainer to geek it out and get some answers.

The hardware configurations of my five test systems were as follows:

Test System #1

• Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard
• Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester processor
• 1 GB OCZ PC4200 EL Dual-Channel Platinum Edition memory
• ATI Radeon X850 XT PE video card
• Western Digital 1200JD 120 GB SATA hard drive
• OCZ ModStream 520W power supply

Test System #2

• Soltek K890Pro-939 motherboard
• Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester processor
• 1 GB OCZ PC4200 EL Dual-Channel Platinum Edition memory
• ATI Radeon X850 XT PE video card
• Western Digital 1200JD 120 GB SATA hard drive
• OCZ ModStream 520W power supply

Test System #3

• AOpen AK79D motherboard
• Athlon XP 3000+ (Thoroughbred B) processor
• 768 MB PC2700 memory
• ATI Radeon 8500 128 MB video card
• 40 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 hard drive
• AOpen FSP350-60BT power supply

Test System #4

• Soltek K8TPro-939 motherboard
• Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester processor
• 1 GB OCZ PC4200 EL Dual-Channel Platinum Edition memory
• ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB video card
• Western Digital 1200JD 120 GB SATA hard drive
• OCZ ModStream 520W power supply

Test System #5

• Soltek K8AN2E-GR motherboard
• Athlon 64 3400+ processor
• 512 MB OCZ PC3500 Dual-Channel memory
• ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256 MB video card
• Seagate Barracuda SATA V 120 GB hard drive
• Enermax EG465P-VD power supply

Our digital multimeter is a Canadian Tire Mastercraft branded digital multimeter. The model number is 052-0060-2.