Monitor Your Computer’s Operating Temperatures

With todays Dual Core and Quad Core processors, the personal computer is becoming much more powerful. The downside of this is that they output a substantial amount of power to perform at fast speeds and in so doing, produce considerably more heat than older generation and legacy processors. Now, while some computers have adequate cooling systems, others don’t, which is bad news when you consider how important it is to control the core temperature of the unit for long lasting system performance. Over heating would obviously lead to damaging the sensitive processors, and by monitoring the processors temperature you can keep in check the problems which are caused by overheating, such as frequent system crashes.

Almost all modern CPU’s have sensors on them and these programs help you read the data from those sensors.

SpeedFan

SpeedFan is a program that can monitor temperatures and voltages of the motherboard and the hard disks. It can also control the cooling fans of the computer. SpeedFan supports S.M.A.R.T technology and SCSI disks. It can also change the FSB speed on some machines.

SpeedFan’s capability to control the cooling fans of the computer is very useful. It can be used to lower noise and power utilization.

CoreTemp

CoreTemp is no nonsense, dedicated temperature reader. It shows the temperatures of the processing cores and the details of the processor. It’s a handy tool, supporting the whole Intel line and most of the AMD line. It combines slick visuals with some handy features such as saving the readings to txt file.

It also takes a very minimum amount of RAM.

Everest Ultimate Edition by Lavalys Inc. - $34.95

This application is easy to use and gives quite a number of readings. It is a comprehensive monitoring tool for the CPU, Motherboard, Graphic Card, Hard disk(s), voltage, and RAM... in short, pretty much everything. It gives details on all hardware installed on the computer. It doesn’t take much RAM, and it works without any clashes.

Everest Ultimate also has a sidebar gadget for Vista whereby you can monitor temperature values that you want. The sidebar gadget can be turned on by using File >> Preferences >> Vista Sidebar >> Sidebar items.

The thing I really like about this application is that unlike other apps, this shows the temp or any other readings in the taskbar, next to the clock. It can show almost any reading there. The other apps just show a single value when they are open on the desktop, whereas Everest blends into the background. You can keep an eye on the changing temperatures as you work or play.