Recommend heat monitor?

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PC turned off today twice. I noticed it was running warm just by touch. I opened it up (1st time since new, 2 years) Vacuumed it out and then plugged it in to check fan and all appeared proper. Anybody using a heat monitoring application. Something simple/frree.

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Try HWMonitor, it keeps tabs on temps and voltages.

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Try HWMonitor, it keeps tabs on temps and voltages.

Well 2nd time is the charm, got HW installed and like the simplicity of it.

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HWMonitor here as well, it’s free and utilizes many, if not all, onboard sensors.
The more sophisticated your motherboard, the more monitoring sensors you’ll have, irrigardless of the specific monitoring app you’ve installed. (usually)

A few other tips & solutions to a hot running PC;
Cleaning the dust and grime out on a regular basis is a standard must do, but if after doing so, you still find your running hot…

Try to locate exactly where you’re running high temps. Sometimes it will be a simple matter of installing a fan on the Northbridge sink.
Other times you may need to reseat a heatsink with new thermal paste, or even an upgraded after-market CPU fan & sink.

It will all depend upon where your running hot, so try to pinpoint specific internal locations, by both monitoring tool and by direct observation and touch.

If you have a hot GPU card that dumps heat inside the case, you’ll need to look into fan/ventilation solutions that more adequately deal
with removing excess internal case heat. Anything more than 50 C [idle] is usually a bit too much.

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I’ve used Core Temp, which seems to be less comprehensive than HWmonitor in that it deals only with the CPU.

Note that Dell does not seem to have implemented temperature sensors on its desktop computers (at least).

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Yeah, Dell is extremely limited, but they (MB sensors) are there to some extent, even on the desktop models.
The majority of your temp monitoring tools are geared more to the enthusiast MB market, like Asus and others, and less so to the generic boards
that Dell puts out. But if you have a higher end Dell gaming rig, you’ll most certainly have the sensor capabilities. It just depends on the model in many instances.

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Yeah, Dell is extremely limited, but they (MB sensors) are there to some extent, even on the desktop models.
The majority of your temp monitoring tools are geared more to the enthusiast MB market, like Asus and others, and less so to the generic boards
that Dell puts out. But if you have a higher end Dell gaming rig, you’ll most certainly have the sensor capabilities. It just depends on the model in many instances.

I have read before that Dell computers are somewhat lacking in heat sensors and other diagnostic tools. As all our PCs have been Dell, and my aging XP machine needs replacing soon, any suggestions as to a better brand to get as next would be welcome. Apologies for being somewhat off topic, just that this thread reminded me of something to look for in the new desktop.

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Doesn’t SIW have a temp/heat program

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I think it does but it’s one of those clean softwares that is frequently flagged up by antivirus software during download. It saves typing if you recommend something else

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Well as my username suggests, not to smart as I have SIW but very seldom opened it. Yes indeed it does have a sensors heat info.

I downloaded HWmonitor yesterday and it had a weird glitch. I download all things to a USB drive and I did the install but when done I wanted to move the download to a folder on C: drive where I move all downloads of applications after installed. This rascal would not allow such a move so I ended up uninstalling it.

The good news so far is that after doing the vacuum clean inside PC all is running as it should (so far) “My bad” because it was purchased new 5/11 and not touched because I follow the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” program. Reason being usually when I get done fixing something I have abused something else. Kind of a one step forward, 2 steps backward program.

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Excellent, perhaps it, or the installer, was still running in the background yesterday, that would account for you not being able to movee it from the USB. Whatever, I’m pleased you have it working correctly now.

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Excellent, perhaps it, or the installer, was still running in the background yesterday, that would account for you not being able to movee it from the USB. Whatever, I’m pleased you have it working correctly now.

Makes sense maybe next time I will just reboot before I uninstall Geeze I amaze myself at how stupid I can be, course I woirk hard at it.

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The free one I use that gives you more info than most folks need but has a nice graphical interface with green/red warnings is Piriform’s Speccy:

http://www.piriform.com/

They’re the folks that also have CCleaner.

Jim

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I like RealTemp, but it’s only for some Intel CPU’s. I’ll have to give HWmonitor a spin on my “toybox.” I’ve used CPUID’s CPU-Z and like it.

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You will find that most of these to NOT give accurate temp readings but do provide relative warning indications. To be clear, use an good, accurate infrared temp probe or surface contact type to determine your specific temps of your CPU sink which will be very close to core temp if the compound is solid and then correlate. Measure your hard disk drives as well just to be sure as heat destroys the bearing grease/lube if too high. Exhaust temps from the ps fan give you a good indication of its workload as well. Cheers.

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I’ve built the last two computers I’ve owned, so one can pick and choose the board and components one wants
over what some manufacturer has on offer at that particular time.

Higher end systems will usually always have an abundance of sensors for fans, temps, and others, in more locations than
lower end systems. I think you’ll find that pretty much all of your lower end systems will have these limitations.

So before you purchase a new computer from a manufacturer, always do in depth research. Get MB spec sheets and pour
over them likes there’s no tomorrow. The last thing you want in a pricy purchase are surprises.
Even if your not looking to get a higher end system, always do your research. Knowing proc and memory speed may not be enough.

There are also aftermarket solutions like fan controllers and temp sensors with LED readouts.
Then there is the temp gun which can be pretty decent.

33913-zzz
As you can see from some of my temps, they’re not always accurate.
Sometimes the best way to get an idea of the REAL temps is to get your fingers in there and feel it.
128 C is uncomfortably hot, you won’t miss it.

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Thanks Clint, I reckon you have answered the question convincingly – I might as well buy another Dell.

There’s no way I’m going to build a PC myself, I wouldn’t know what to buy or where to start, and it would have to be twice the size of either of the desktops I have opened – even adding ram is difficult for my fingers in the confined space of a Dell desktop.

A high end system would be out of place for my fairly basic needs, and it sounds as though all cheaper desktops are fairly similar, so I don’t need to bother too much about what I get.

George

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Hey guys, HWMonitor shows a “hit” on Virustotal
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/d3b6e35c03338e79ff566c67d7547ac26630379e0ce39e9dd8aefe63a78a1ce7/analysis/
showing up as “a variant of Win32/Bundled.Toolbar.Ask.C”
Do you get a chance to say no to that during install?

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@ brino – yes, there are also zipped 32 and 64 -bit zipped versions available from my earlier link that contain only the executable file.

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