3 Best (Free) CPU Temperature Monitors for Windows

Even though summer’s almost over, you’ll still want to keep your PC running cool. What better way to do so other than to grab a free CPU temperature monitor?

Note that these are only for Windows (note the title). They may also work for Mac or there might be a Mac alternative.

HWMonitor

This is a very detailed and sophisticated hardware monitor that works with both 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs. You can use a non-installable version if you don’t want to add any registry entries.

HWMonitor will read various stats and display them in both chart and numeric format:

  • CPU temps
  • Motherboard temp
  • HDD temps
  • GPU temps
  • Fan speeds
  • Voltage usage
  • SMART details

The same makers from CPU-Z made this, so you know the team behind it knows what they’re doing. This is the one I personally use on days with extensive gaming.

Open Hardware Monitor

This one is a very basic but simple hardware monitor. You’ll get a list of all the basics like fan speeds, temps, and SMART details. The logs can be toggled and filtered as you wish and the UI is very simple to navigate.

OHM works on intel and AMD along with both ATI and Nvidia cards. The program is also open-source, so if you’re a dev, you can add your own codes to customize it accordingly.

Speccy

This one’s from the makers of CCleaner. You get all the basics and you have the ability to also make reports. For example, viewing the system performance over a specific time period or max/min values for a specific day.

Speccy definitely has more bloat to it compared to the other options on this list. There’s also a premium version that has a bit more to offer, but you should be OK with just the basic, free version.

All of these are decent and do the job. If you’ve been worried about CPU overheating, you can grab one and watch your temps in real time.