July 19th 2009 01:40 am
Monitor hardware temperature of your PC
Computer hardware don’t like heat. You have seen server rooms being fitted with large air conditioner to cold the stack of computer servers at cold temperature. This is to ensure the hardware doesn’t overheat. And overheat will cause the hardware failed to run properly. I’ve seen many of my friend’s PC stop working because of overheat. Normally due to the incorrect way of applying thermal paste on the CPU. From what I have seen, most PC shop owners doesn’t know the correct way of applying thermal paste (at least in this country) which is a saddening fact.
Well, there is a utility which can monitor the temperature of your PC. It monitors the CPU, graphic card, hard drive and chipset temperature. You can help yourself by saving the trip and bucks to the computer shop, by identifying the failing hardware yourself.
This utility is called HWMonitor. The download link is here. It monitors your PC’s temperature, fan speed and voltages. This utility is more friendly towards new hardware as it can identify the chipset of newer hardwares and report the temperature accordingly. For older PC like the Athlon XP that I’m using right now, the temperature reading is limited.
Using this HWMonitor hardware temperature reading tool is very easy. Download the installer, install and you can start monitor your hardware temperature.
HWMonitor temperature reading tool
Like I mentioned earlier, this utility has some limitation of identifying older hardware. It doesn’t state which temperature is from the chipset, CPU or the PWM. From here, I can identify TMPIN1 is the CPU temperature as it fluctuate to 60C++ when I run Orthos stress utility. 60C was quite hot actually, but it is still alive and kicking after full 5 years of using this hot babe.
The next time you encountered a sudden shutdown or the whole screen hanged there, you can use this utility to monitor which component of your PC is the culprit. Usually 70C degrees or more is where your hardware starts to failed. Keep in mind that graphic processing unit(GPU), the graphic card is more heat tolerant. The idle temperature is normally around 45-50C where the maximum temperature can be as high as 90C which is normal for some GPU. GPU normally stops running at 100C or more.
Give this utility a try. It’s a freeware by the way. 
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