How to monitor your CPU Temperature and stop a catastrophic meltdown.

To monitor your CPU temperature is a very important part of windows maintenance and up-keep.Most users do not even realize that there central Possessing unit or CPU for short after a number of years of use or through improper thermal compound application can start to over heat and can lead to permanent hardware damage!!. Now I know what you are thinking:"But windows has safety features in place to stop such meltdowns and will be shut down to protect your hardware", well that's true, however those features built into the windows platform are more a safety net than a full on saving grace and if you are not careful you could damage your precious CPU and this could take more than one of your components tn the process.So do not be caught with a overheating CPU.

So whats a Fellow to Do?

Well for one you should invest in a CPU monitoring program that monitors your temps and gives you feedback in real time, so you will always be aware of your CPU temperatures. And also earlier when I said Invest it's only your time as the program is totally free of cost.This handy free Software is:

Core Temp

Core Temp

This program is called:Core Temp and is simply the best program you will ever find for monitoring your hot little processor as it crunches those 1 and 0 for you in the background on a daily basis. You can download and install the latest edition here.

The core Temp Interface.

The instillation is pretty straight forward, simply download and install the .exe file and you will be up and running with Core Temp's in no time and  monitoring each core on your Multi-threaded processor. The best thing about this App is that it has full set of safety features built in such as setting a safety temperature at which to shutdown the PC if the CPU reaches the predefined Temp that you set. This is great for overclockers or those that like to tweak there CPU to get every bit of processing power out of the chip.

You can enable the Overheat Protection or  Safe Temp feature by:

1. Launch Core Temp.
2. Select Option.
3. Check the box that says Enable Overheat Protection and select the option that best suits you such as: activating at a specific temperature or Automatic mode. Once you have decide on which level of protection to choose- select OK.

My favorite feature: Windows 7 or 8 Gadget Integration of Core Temp.

All CPU Meter Gadget with Core temp integrated on the desktop

For those readers who are thinking what I am taking about when I say windows 8 gadgets, well with a simple tweak you can have your windows 7 Gadgets that you love so much, again in windows 8, you can do this by seeing this article that we did a while back on: How to install windows 7 Gadgets in Windows 8.

After you have fully integrated Windows 7 gadgets into Windows 8 you may want to update the All CPU meter to the latest edition, you can find this  here if you have not already installed the Gadget. Once you have your Gadgets up and running be sure to configure the All CPU Meter Gadget to show the Temps of Core Temp which should be set to run at start-up and in the background.
 To configure the All CPU meter simply set the following options:

All CPU settings menu options for Core Temp to display.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial I use this simple Gadget to monitor and protect my personal PC and find it an invaluable tool to utilize when troubleshooting laptops that have a overheating processor and to know when to change the thermal compound on a PC. If you have any questions feel free to leave a Message in the comment section below.