The Lemon Fool

Can anyone recommend an application to monitor system temperarures? I previously had such a thing on another computer as I once had a PC at work where the CPU fan bearing seized up leading to the CPU 'blowing up' [very loud explosion + clouds of smoke!]. Quite surprisingly such a simple user-friendly function does not come bundled into Windows, so you have to install a 3rd party product. I searched and these look like candidates.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows ... unning-at/
https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

I'm looking for something pretty straight-forward for an every-day home user. I'm not over-clocking, nor editing video or anything as heating as that. I understand that the max viable CPU temp is around 90C, but you should take off a buffer of say 20C and so not go above 70C. An alert function if it hit 70C would be ideal. And/or perhaps a temp. reading that's prominent enough so as not to get overlooked.

The Speedfan programme website is familiar to me, hence I suspect this is what I previously had installed but IDR. The copyright info is '2000-2017', ie nothing yet in 2018; but I'm not techie enough to know if that matters.
The howtogeek article [dd: March 2017] describes various programmes. One called Core Temp would appear to offer the functionality that I need.
The latter one called speccy I've on my shortlist since I've previously been a long-term user of 'ccleaner' which IIRC = crap cleaner, ie a useful small programme that cleans up user-defined ROM-hogging files/detritus on your system.

Does anyone have any suggestions, either from the above, or others?

DiamondEcho wrote:Can anyone recommend an application to monitor system temperarures? I previously had such a thing on another computer as I once had a PC at work where the CPU fan bearing seized up leading to the CPU 'blowing up' [very loud explosion + clouds of smoke!]. Quite surprisingly such a simple user-friendly function does not come bundled into Windows, so you have to install a 3rd party product. I searched and these look like candidates.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows ... unning-at/
https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

I'm looking for something pretty straight-forward for an every-day home user. I'm not over-clocking, nor editing video or anything as heating as that. I understand that the max viable CPU temp is around 90C, but you should take off a buffer of say 20C and so not go above 70C. An alert function if it hit 70C would be ideal. And/or perhaps a temp. reading that's prominent enough so as not to get overlooked.

The Speedfan programme website is familiar to me, hence I suspect this is what I previously had installed but IDR. The copyright info is '2000-2017', ie nothing yet in 2018; but I'm not techie enough to know if that matters.
The howtogeek article [dd: March 2017] describes various programmes. One called Core Temp would appear to offer the functionality that I need.
The latter one called speccy I've on my shortlist since I've previously been a long-term user of 'ccleaner' which IIRC = crap cleaner, ie a useful small programme that cleans up user-defined ROM-hogging files/detritus on your system.

Does anyone have any suggestions, either from the above, or others?

Just a thought... Some motherboards (such as Asus) come with a utility to do this as an option. It might be worth checking to see if your motherboard came with such software originally.

RC

I’ve used this one without any trouble before...
https://openhardwaremonitor.org
At the time, I was using it to see if a disk was getting excessive soft errors by looking at the “smart” parameters. It wasn’t.
... gets a bit boring though.

HW Monitor, here https://download.cnet.com/HWMonitor/300 ... 93486.html

With an anti-static band, one can also open the case and vacuum the dust off the heatsinks.

V8

DiamondEcho wrote:Can anyone recommend an application to monitor system temperarures? I previously had such a thing on another computer as I once had a PC at work where the CPU fan bearing seized up leading to the CPU 'blowing up' [very loud explosion + clouds of smoke!]. Quite surprisingly such a simple user-friendly function does not come bundled into Windows, so you have to install a 3rd party product. I searched and these look like candidates.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows ... unning-at/
https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

I'm looking for something pretty straight-forward for an every-day home user. I'm not over-clocking, nor editing video or anything as heating as that. I understand that the max viable CPU temp is around 90C, but you should take off a buffer of say 20C and so not go above 70C. An alert function if it hit 70C would be ideal. And/or perhaps a temp. reading that's prominent enough so as not to get overlooked.

The Speedfan programme website is familiar to me, hence I suspect this is what I previously had installed but IDR. The copyright info is '2000-2017', ie nothing yet in 2018; but I'm not techie enough to know if that matters.
The howtogeek article [dd: March 2017] describes various programmes. One called Core Temp would appear to offer the functionality that I need.
The latter one called speccy I've on my shortlist since I've previously been a long-term user of 'ccleaner' which IIRC = crap cleaner, ie a useful small programme that cleans up user-defined ROM-hogging files/detritus on your system.

Does anyone have any suggestions, either from the above, or others?

Is this really needed? It feels like a solution looking for a problem.

To me you are adding a further risk of application conflicts or spyware/bloatware for very little to no gain.

I just have task manager constantly running, so you get a little CPU meter in the toolbar and the fans ramping up lets me know audibly that is under a longer stress load.

Most modern kit will thermally throttle when the CPU gets too hot, a bit of an issue with passive cooling especially (or Apple kit where the fan temp threshold was kept deliberately high to appease Steve Job's OCD... )

DiamondEcho wrote:Can anyone recommend an application to monitor system temperarures?

I use Core Temp, mostly 'cos when I went looking I found several articles (inc. the howtogeek one) that recommended it as the best "basic" one, and it's perfectly fine for me.

I'm looking for something pretty straight-forward for an every-day home user. I'm not over-clocking, nor editing video or anything as heating as that. I understand that the max viable CPU temp is around 90C, but you should take off a buffer of say 20C and so not go above 70C. An alert function if it hit 70C would be ideal. And/or perhaps a temp. reading that's prominent enough so as not to get overlooked.

Yep, Core Temp ticks those boxes. It has an alert function and also shows the temperature in the notification area of the taskbar. For CPU temperatures you need to look up the CPU. I was initially alarmed to see my AMD laptop normally being in the 60s/70s and peaking into the 80s/90s but on looking it up found that's quite normal. My i3-7100 desktop, in contrast, is usually in the low 30s and I don't think I've ever seen it over 50.

Thanks, I'll come back to this later.
@Ashfordian re: 'Is it really needed?'

I've had one CPU blow up on me. I've had a second one shutting down occasionally which at the time I couldn't understand. Turned out the fan had failed and the motherboard had a thermal cut-out enabled.
This time my PC has just been freighted internationally and from the packagain we know our freight was roughly handled. My PC was making an alarming rattling noise so I investigated. The main fan on the CPU had become detached. So I checked the grease layer on the CPU chip was still ok and carefully re-attached the fan in place. I've attached fans before so I'm reasonably confident it is ok - but perhaps you understand why I want to keep an eye on it.

I'm heading out now but till come back to this thread later and decide on a course of action. Thx all!

Just as a place-holder while I continue to research this question. The motherboard is: Asus P7P55 LX, the specifications for which are here: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55 ... fications/ This says that it 'has onboard hardware monitor that detects and displays temperature' BUT I don't know where it displays it! And I also see no reference to recommended maximum working temperature in the spec/guide.

So what I think I'm going to do is to:-
- start with say a 'safe' maximum temperature of 70C in mind (or even 60C, I'll see)
- decide upon one of the apps/programmes suggested above.
- install it on my new laptop and see how it works, how to set the max temperature and so on, then when happy with that
- install it on my destop.

DiamondEcho wrote:Just as a place-holder while I continue to research this question. The motherboard is: Asus P7P55 LX, the specifications for which are here: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55 ... fications/ This says that it 'has onboard hardware monitor that detects and displays temperature' BUT I don't know where it displays it! .

It shows in the BIOS which is no use to you if you want to monitor it in-use Unfortunately it doesn't look as if there is an Asus utility to show the temperature in Windows for the P7P55 LX. Your plan of action looks good.

RC

Ah ok, thanks
I'm currently familiarising myself with Core Temp on my laptop, downloaded from MajorGeeks. I'm encouraged that so far I like it, it's not THAT complicated that it's over my head.
The max working temperature ('TjMax') for my CPU is indicated as 100C. Using it lightly this morning the Core Temps are recorded as having ranged between 36-49C.
Under Options I could specify a temperature below the TjMax to activate it, that is currently on 'Activate if TjMax is reached (5C below). That's because this is a brand new laptop and I am considerably less worried about it for now than my old desktop. I have also set the Notifications to On for 'Balloon popup' and 'Flash Core Temp at the taskbar'.

It'd be nice to be able to see a visual test of what these notifications looks like, not least because the programme icon in the Taskbar is a little confusing. This is what Google suggests it looks like: https://goo.gl/images/r3pZK2
What I see is slightly different in two ways 1) to the right of the thermometer in the image there is a 3-4mm high red thing. It resembles the (red) 'mercury' in the thermometer to it's left. I can't see that is a warning, or '!' as my temps have been nowehere near alert levels today.
2) the programme icon in the Sytems Tray is underlined in green. Inititally I wondered if that was an additional 'Ok' notification, but it appears Win10 assigns open prog icons like this a coloured under-line according to how the progs are installed.

IIRC it was McFool who suggested CoreTemp. Perhaps he'd be kind enough if/when he drops by to let me know re: 1)^ what the prog icon looks like for him?

Once I'm bedded in with it on my laptop then I'll start installing it on my PC.

DiamondEcho wrote:IIRC it was McFool who suggested CoreTemp. Perhaps he'd be kind enough if/when he drops by to let me know re: 1)^ what the prog icon looks like for him?

I don't have an icon. I have it set for just two numbers, temperature and processor frequency. See Options - Settings - Notification Area

This time my PC has just been freighted internationally and from the packagain we know our freight was roughly handled. My PC was making an alarming rattling noise so I investigated. The main fan on the CPU had become detached. So I checked the grease layer on the CPU chip was still ok and carefully re-attached the fan in place.

You might consider upgrading the thermal compound and if you've got the inclination to do that a bigger heatsink might be in order too.

You can clean thermal compound off using Sterets - The small alcohol impregnated swabs they rub you with before an injection, most chemists will sell you a handful for pennies each once you explain what you're going to use them for.

Thermal compound of choice would be one which uses nano diamonds. Diamonds conduct heat very well and don't conduct electricity which makes these compounds vastly superior to the nano silver compounds which conduct both heat and electric, a smear of nano silver in the wrong place and your motherboard can malfunction.

When it comes to heatsinks, bigger is generally better although at larger extremes measuring up is sensible as you can have trouble clearing the memory modules or in some instances getting the case lid on.

I've got a couple of machines which use an earlier version on this cooler which really is a monster.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01 ... TXTK49WJ20

On the plus side, currently speedfan reports CPU at 33ºC with fan speed of 500RPM. BIOS reports a slightly higher temperature for some reason, still under 40ºC with a room temperaure of 26ºC.

On that note, my motherboard has a system info tab in BIOS which shows temperatures along with some advanced settings including shut down if the fan fails. Generally, if you are prepared to use a decent aftermarket cooler, the chances of a fan fail will be significantly reduced and I'm pretty sure all modern processors will thermally throttle down to prevent damage automatically.

Regards,

B.

I downloaded https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/download/standard today and noticed that it has temp readings for CPU, motherboard, SSD, hard drives et al.
Handy...