Hardware Monitoring

Serbian

I built my new PC on Friday and there was no smoke or fire when I turned it on so I was pretty pleased with myself! I now want to test it for stability and keep an eye on CPU temperatures or anything else that I should be monitoring. There is a temperature monitor on the front of my case (Antec P160w) which shows operating temperatures between 20 and 26 degrees, but I don't know what exactly that is measuring or if it is accurate.

I basically want you to tell me everything you know about stress testing and monitoring a PC

KdjaCL

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

That will give you temps as long as the motherboard supports it.

Usually the motherboard has a decent program with it (go to website to get latest one).


Stress testing is like putting your hand over a fire eventually its going to burn you


kdjac

B00MSTICK

Prime95 (just google it) is the best stress tester, leave it on for 12 hours and if it doesnt fail then your stable

Serbian

Thanks for the quick replies guys. Another thing I forgot to mention was benchmarking the graphics card. What software would be the best for that?

WizZard

3DMark05/06 are the best and most common graphics stress-test/benchmark programs.
Check www.futuremark.com

L31mr0d

I use a cross between systool and samurize to display everything and anything on my desktop about my computer, from system temps, fan speeds, clock speeds, processes running, how much i've downloaded from the internet, the weather? once you start monitoring your system you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Samurize is excellent because it's 100% configurable, so you can make it look and do exactly what you want.

Serbian

Thanks for that. I'll try out some of the software when I get home tonight.