Thanks for your reply MTA
1. "Both programs could simply be getting the (wrong) data from the same spot." That's where I'm at now.
2. " what is the temp first thing in the morning after being off all night?" The same. I mean THE MOMENT I turn it on. And the room this morning was 15 C/60 F. It's physically impossible. Unless something that is plugged in is always on and hot. The test for that would be to unplug everything tonight, plug in tomorrow morning. And I will.
4. The PC is only 8 months old. The Asus Vivomini PC seen here -- https://www.asus.com/us/Mini-PCs/VivoMini-VC66/ (I got the i5 not the i7)
5. I bought it so that I could 'easily' open it. Turns out the nifty little screws are hidden deep and require a weird Philips screw driver (long but thin). I don't want to open it because I've got a bad feeling getting the screws back in won't be pretty. I'll send it into support if it comes to it. Wjhat I did do is put a vacuum up to the vents to get whatever dust might be lingering.
6. There's only one fan in the unit and it's behaving normally in every way.
7. I'm ripping a DVD file right now. This usually makes the fan come on and heat up the unit a little. Look at the difference from above to now --
The CPU is up significantly but the motherboard is pretty much in the same place. This smells like a false read.
