CPUID HWMonitor

HWMonitor queries the sensors already present in a PC and presents everything it finds in a single expandable list, grouped by component. For each sensor it keeps three numbers side by side: the current reading, the lowest and the highest seen since the program started. That min/max column is the main reason people use it, because it survives a full-screen game or a stress run and shows afterwards how hot or how low a rail actually went.

Coverage extends across the usual sources of sensor data: the LPCIO chip on the motherboard (Winbond, Nuvoton and ITE families), Intel and AMD processors, NVIDIA, AMD and Intel graphics cards, memory modules with thermal sensors, and hard disks and SSDs read through S.M.A.R.T. On laptops it also reports battery charge level and charge or discharge rate. Some power supplies and all-in-one liquid coolers from Corsair, NZXT, MSI and Gigabyte expose their own telemetry and are read as well. The program runs standalone and is also offered as a ZIP, so it can be kept on a USB stick without installing anything.

The base program is free and has no time limit. CPUID sells a separate paid edition, HWMonitor PRO, which adds monitoring of a remote machine over TCP/IP (including from an Android device), individual sensors pinned to the notification area as tray icons, and logging that can turn recorded data into graphs. The sensor reading itself is the same in both; PRO is about how the data is delivered, not about which sensors are visible.

It suits anyone diagnosing a cooling problem, verifying a new build under load, or checking whether a laptop throttles. It is a viewer, not a control panel: it cannot change fan curves, set alerts, or apply overclocks, and it does not overlay readings on a running game. Users who need thresholds and notifications, or an in-game overlay, will want a different tool alongside it.