Monitor your CPU temperature

CPU Temp, CPU Temperature

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve noticed that my laptop is overheating too uncomfortably even when perched on that cush top. At first, I thought maybe it was due to the 2GB RAM upgrade I did a couple of weeks ago or that there’s something wrong with battery (which btw, I think needs a replacement soon). Besides, I’ve also noticed that the battery life has dwindled to just about an hour.

Before getting that 12-cell extended battery, I discovered from Marc some nice tools to monitor the CPU core temperatures. One is the SpeedFan and the other is the PC Wizard 2008.

CPU temperature

Both apps measure the core temperature of the CPU (with support for Dual Core or Core Duo) as well as the HDD temperature, showing temps for each core. SpeedFan also has a feature to control the CPU fan speed depending on heat levels. However, the two apps do not reflect the same core temperatures when operated simultaneously. I’d get 55 degrees on SpeedFan while PC Wizard registers 52 degrees when CPU is at 10-20% activity. I like PC Wizard better since it shows me a lot of other information about the system, including current core frequency which seems to throttle down to around 997Mhz when idle.

Anyway, I later discovered that the Folding@Home client was eating too much CPU cycles in the background that it shoots the temperature to 70 degrees. I just turned it off on the laptop and retained it on the desktop instead.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

9 Comments

issai says:

17 years ago

my dell inspiron did the same thing. i put it on top of my comforter. i think the comforter smothered the exhaust for the fan, no cool air can get in. now my battery dies if not plugged. oh well, that’s my theory and i’m sticking to it lolz!
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fruityoaty says:

17 years ago

Like the commenter above me, my Dell Inspiron likes to go nuclear, too. I’ve read that a lot of Dell Inspiron older models have poorly designed fan systems… hence, the overheating.

I blow out the vents with compressed air to displace the dust and I purchased a fan cooler recently which greatly helped, but I will check out those apps above, too.
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beeps says:

17 years ago

i have a Dell Latitude D620 Laptop and tried to use benchmarking using PC wizard. is it really that long? i mean the processing of the output of the benchmarking. (Tried Video Benchmarking)
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BrianB says:

17 years ago

I never use my battery when I’m at home. My Dell Inspiron’s (the 700m model) 6 cell still lasts 3 hours with wifi and almost five if ‘m not online. It’s two years old!

But any week now, I’ll buy that white MacBook at Shangri La mall, which only sells for 56k now.
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noel says:

17 years ago

I also contribute CPU cycles to SETI and such activity really heats up the processor.

I disabled it eventually.
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infoguide2 says:

17 years ago

im using pc wizard2007, whenever my cpu temp reach 65 Celcius. I turn our desk fan on, its beside my laptop.

i also installed speedfan, did not like it. so i stick with pc wizard.
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lhon says:

17 years ago

thanks
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lhon says:

17 years ago

ok
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Leslie Kissel says:

10 years ago

Im new to the site and decided to sign up to a tech forum because im losing my touch with technology since finishing my apprenticeship in IT. Basically i did an IT apprenticeship starting in september 2011 and finishing april 2012, but have been unemployed ever since and currently looking for work. Ive been lazy however and lost touch with alot of the knowledge i had gained on the apprenticeship, so i have decided to start using forums again, it worked with previous hobbies such as photography, writing, drawing and graphics design so i thought it should help with my computing again lmao.
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