I just read the cpu temp sticky, and it mentioned a couple of times that the difference between your CPU case temperature and your core temperatures should only be about 5C, but mine is like 20C. Is that bad? Right now I have a core 2 duo e8500 running at around 3.3GHz. According to SpeedFan, idle cpu case temp is 23C, and idle core temps are around 45C. Core Temp shows the cores closer to 40. Either way the difference is well over 5C. Are my cores to hot? Or,... is my cpu case too cold (if that's even possible)? Or is this normal and I misunderstood the sticky?

run real temp and see what it says. Core temp has the tj max set at 105c by default, so it will report it a little high.

RealTemp gives me circa 36 for the cores.

Does SpeedFan set the tjmax even higher? Because it gave hotter temps that core temp.

Read it or scanned it. I hope you scanned it, for your sake. Reread the calibrations section, and apparently all the other sections as well. Tcase is calibrated to ambient and Tjunction is calibrated to Tcase. The e8500 seriously needs the calibration, because the DTSs in them are screwy.

36 is fine.

I'm not positive, but I thought speedfan used the same settings as coretemp.