Excessive heat damages electronics. Monitoring the temperature of your CPU and other computer components can help you keep them running at their optimum performance .

Why CPU Temperature has increased

When the first affordable computers were offered to the general public in the early eighties , system engineers and designers took in consideration what heat was emitted by system components and ensured their case and cooling designs handled the appropriate amount of heat so system damage or instability was rarely an issue . Most peripherals were external, so they didn’t really add heat issues to the base system, and those that were internal were low power, and low bandwidth technologies. This was acceptable to the public at the time, since not many people felt the need to add to their PCs .

In the late nineties , the temperature bubble burst. Heat was increasing by leaps and bounds in newer systems that were far more complex than their predecessors.

Monitoring CPU Temperature

Heat sensors are generally added to systems that are most prone to getting heated up. For example, most CPUs, video cards, and hard drives will have heat sensors. Often times you can monitor the temperature of your hardware in the BIOS. However, it is usually helpful to be able to see the temperatures when you are in Windows. For this, you can download third party software such as

    Motherboard:

•     PC Wizard 2005
•     MBM 5
•     SpeedFan (which can be downloaded from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php )
•     Intel Active Monitor
•     Hmonitor
•     Everest Home Edition

    CPU:

•     PC Wizard 2005
•     MBM 5
•     SpeedFan (now has 64-bit support) (which can be downloaded from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php )
•     Intel Active Monitor
•     Hmonitor
•     Everest Home Edition

    Case:

•     PC Wizard 2005
•     MBM 5
•     SpeedFan (which can be downloaded from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php )
•     Everest Home Edition (labeled as AUX)

    Video Card:

•     SpeedFan (which can be downloaded from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php )
•     built in nvidia card
•     built in ATI card

The easiest and most cost effective thing to do is to make sure that your computer case is clean and organised . Making sure that all fans are clean and running well can solve many heat issues and can lower temperatures even if you don’t have an overheating problem.  Another easy tip is to turn off the PC when it is being used . This can prevent overheating when you are not around to monitor the PC . There are many cooling techniques that are used besides the ones that the system comes inherently with. You can add fans to the computer case to increase airflow. You can also place the PC in a cooler part of your house. If you still need more cooling power, you can upgrade your computer case to a case which is better designed for cooling. Last, you can upgrade your CPU fan and heatsink to a bigger and more powerful cooler.

The system temperature monitoring tools included with Windows Vista will probably meet most of your needs. But I find that they have two limitations. First, they can’t monitor certain low-level hardware functions like processor temperature or whether the chip fan is functioning properly. Monitoring such features can help you anticipate some hardware failures before they arise . And second, Windows Vista system temperature monitoring features aren’t tightly integrated with each other. So if you want a fully integrated health monitoring and reporting tool, you may want to look at what 3rd -party vendors provide in this area.

Check out what other vendors offer in this area. For example, if your motherboard is from Intel, you can install the Intel Active Monitor and view your processor temperature, fan speed, and other useful information in real time. If you have a different motherboard, you may be able to find a similar utility for it. Or it may have been included on a CD when you bought your system. And there may already be a similar tool installed if you purchased an OEM system.