Tctl/Tdie vs Tdie-- which should I be referring to?

[TurboSoggy]

I have a 7800X3D, and the Tctl/Tdie temperature is consistently higher than the Tdie temperature. On idle, Tdie goes down to around 37 C while Tctl/Tdie will only go down to around 42/43 with everything closed out. I'd say, on average, it's around 5-10 degrees higher. I guess it would be helpful to know what tctl and tdie actually mean. Is the Tctl/Tdie just the absolute hottest temperature of any of the sensors? The actual CPU cores never get as hot and are usually 10 degrees lower than Tctl/Tdie. What temperature should I go with when determining whether my CPU cooler is doing its job properly? I've been worried about my high idle temperatures but I'm not sure which number I should be looking at. I'm getting conflicting information online.

 

[Martin]

"CPU Die (average)" as the title says is the average value among multiple sensors during a certain period. So it will always be somewhat lower than the instant (max) value.

 

[TurboSoggy]

"CPU Die (average)" as the title says is the average value among multiple sensors during a certain period. So it will always be somewhat lower than the instant (max) value.

So Tctl/Tdie is the max, and the average is the average of all of them? What is Tdie? The maximum out of only some of them as opposed to all of them? So Tctl/Tdie is including more temperature sensors than the Tdie reading? Is my understanding correct that while Tctl/Tdie had an offset in older CPUs, this offset is not present on the 7800X3D? Is it just some sensor in a hard to cool area of the chip and that's why it's always so much higher? Thank you.

 

[Martin]

Yes, only the first generation AMD CPUs used an offset between Tctl (control) and Tdie (real temperature).
There are dozens of various temperature sensors inside the CPU (CCD or IOD) and each of those values takes a different set of sensors into account and uses a different evaluation formula.
Some reflect instant (or max) values which can fluctuate very fast, some others use averaging. Unfortunately AMD doesn't fully disclose all details about the exact meaning.