Whether you’re an IT technician or an ardent PC gamer, you’ll want to be sure that every a part of your computer is up and running efficiently. Nevertheless, your computer’s task manager can’t provide you with a full picture of what’s actually happening inside your PC.
Fortunately, the suitable PC monitoring software can aid you out here.
Computer monitoring software can display real-time statistics about various components corresponding to CPU, RAM, GPU, harddrive, etc., to aid you detect any hardware malfunctions.
Such a software not only makes it easier to detect hardware issues earlier but additionally helps you save each money and time.
In this text, we’ll highlight the ten best PC monitoring software platforms together with their key features and pricing. We’ll also inform you what it’s best to search for in such monitoring tools.
Table of Contents
Let’s dive in.
The ten best PC monitoring software options
If you desire to dive into among the basics of software that may monitor PCs, jump ahead to find out about what it’s, the data points you could find in such software, and pick the suitable kind.
Listed below are our top 10 picks for computer activity monitoring software.
1. NZXT CAM
NZXT CAM is top-of-the-line computer monitoring software options for tracking every device component through a single app. It could actually monitor your fan speed, components’ temperatures and overclock their speeds as well.
Note: Overclocking or increasing a component’s clock rate causes it to perform more operations per second, thereby increasing its performance.
With this hardware tracking software, you may check your computer’s memory usage and set alarms for errors. This app also sends you notifications in your phone to observe your system on the go.
Key features
- Gives you real-time data in your GPU and CPU temp, memory usage, storage, and network performance.
- Lets you already know what applications are lively in your computer.
- Tracks your FPS, temperatures, and bandwidth with an in-game overlay.
- Permits you to customize the behavior of your fans and lighting for various times of the day.
Pros
- Control RGB lights, CPU cooling devices and fans including NZXT products unsupported by other PC monitoring utilities
- Has basic PC monitoring functionality including CPU and GPU utilization and temperature checks
Cons
- Not open source
- User reports of system stability issues
Pricing
NZXT is a free hardware monitoring tool.
2. MSI Afterburner
As a gamer, you’ll want to monitor and tweak your graphics card performance to enhance your gaming experience.
Fortunately, MSI Afterburner is the proper performance monitor for any gaming enthusiast.
This monitoring tool enables you to monitor your PC activity and offers you complete control of your graphics card. You’ll be able to monitor your GPU temperature, adjust its clock rate, fan speed, power limits, and more.
Moreover, you don’t need an MSI system to make use of this tool. This hardware monitor supports other brands as well.
Key features
- Permits you to increase your GPU’s clock speed and voltage.
- Permits you to fully customize a predefined fan speed curve to observe cooling performance.
- The OC Scanner finds the very best stable overclock settings to your card.
- On-screen display gives you real-time details about your system’s performance while gaming.
Pros
- Excellent as a GPU focused PC monitoring utility
- Includes GPU overclocking features
Cons
- User interface could be very dated and takes time to learn
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite, because it lacks RGB control and non-GPU fan control
Pricing
MSI Afterburner is a free graphics card monitoring software.
3. HWiNFO
HwiNFO is an all-in-one hardware monitoring tool which you could use on a Microsoft Windows or DOS computer. NASA even used it for monitoring computer system failures in high radiation fields.
This monitoring software can provide you with in-depth details about your computer’s hardware. This app has a customizable user interface that gives you with real-time updates in addition to failure predictions.
Furthermore, you should utilize this PC monitoring tool with other software and third-party extensions to get a comprehensive overview of your computer performance.
Key features
- Offers real-time monitoring of multiple parameters for CPU, GPU, mainboards, drives, and peripherals.
- Displays detailed hardware component specs in a hierarchy.
- Provides multiple reports, status logging, and interfacing options.
- Offers customizable alerts on any monitored metrics.
Pros
- Excellent PC monitoring functionality
- Extremely detailed presentation of current PC component status, including including temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds
Cons
- User interface is superb for presenting a whole lot of data, but will be overwhelming and takes time to learn
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer pc monitoring suite because it has no RGB control or fan control
Pricing
HWinfo is a free hardware monitoring software.
4. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
If you’ve gotten multiple Windows systems in your network and wish to observe worker activity on each computer, you should utilize the PRTG Network Monitor app.
You should use this tool for effective worker monitoring regarding network availability, traffic, and other components usage. This hardware monitoring app also notifies you via SMS, email, or pager when an outage or hardware failure occurs on any worker computer.
Furthermore, this tool has an easy-to-use interface. You can too screenshot and share the info with non-technical employees or customers.
Key features
- Monitors CPUs and memory capacities and alerts you about any issues with loads, temperature, and other failures.
- Alerts you about low disk space and records changes in data.
- Monitors network printers, including cartridge’s ink level and the variety of printed pages.
- Monitors environmental settings, corresponding to temperature and humidity inside server rooms.
Pros
- Comprehensive network monitoring including network, systems and applications
- Effective notifications and visualization tools
Cons
- User interface not well designed for consumer use
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
The paid licenses of this technique monitoring tool start at $1899/license.
5. Open Hardware Monitor
Open Hardware Monitor is open-source software that enables you to monitor fan speeds, voltages, and more. It also works as a CPU thermometer and lets you overclock the components of your computer.
This hardware monitoring software can even read the sensors of ATI and Nvidia graphic cards in addition to SMART (Self Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting Technology) harddrive temperatures.
Key features
- Supports many of the hardware monitoring chips that control the flow of information between different computer components.
- Monitors CPU temperatures by reading core temperature sensors of Intel and AMD processors.
- Can display monitored values via a customizable desktop gadget or within the system tray.
- Supports Windows and Linux operating systems.
Pros
- Good PC monitoring functionality
- More limited sensor tracking could also be less overwhelming for brand new users
Cons
- User interface is amazingly dated
- Won’t work as an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
Open Hardware Monitor is each free and open source.
6. HWMonitor
HWMonitor by CPUID is a monitoring software that may provide critical hardware information like voltage, temperature, and fan speeds.
This PC tracking software has a user-friendly user interface. The app displays all of the core component data in a single window, which is straightforward to grasp even for non-technical users.
This computer monitoring tool is accessible for each 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and will be installed on Windows 10, XP, Vista, 7, and eight.
Key features
- Reads PC’s major health sensors.
- Displays hard drives temperature via SMART (Self Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting Technology).
- Reports graphics card temperature.
- Pro version can save monitoring data and generate logging graphs as bitmap files.
Pros
- Good PC monitoring functionality
- More limited sensor tracking has a smaller learning curve
Cons
- User interface is amazingly dated
- Won’t work as an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
The classic version of this PC monitoring tool is accessible at no cost. Paid plans start at €19.95.
7. AIDA64 Extreme
AIDA64 is one other industry-leading hardware monitoring app that may provide detailed details about your computer hardware like CPU usage and CPU temp.
You should use this computer monitoring app for overclocking and running other diagnostic functions to detect hardware issues.
It also provides 50+ pages of knowledge on hardware configuration, installed programs, software licenses, security applications, and Windows settings. The AIDA64 Extreme Beta also supports certain Mac computers.
Moreover, this tool provides the benchmarks or standard readings for each computer hardware component. This fashion, you may compare the performance of your device with those benchmarks.
Key features
- Offers a stress testing module to check the boundaries of your PC’s components.
- Supports 250+ sensor devices to measure temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, and power draw.
- Features a hardware detection module with a database of over 230,000 entries.
- The customizable panel includes graphs, gauges, custom images, and dynamic or static texts to display the sensor data.
Pros
- Excellent as a component test and benchmark suite, especially for RAM tests
- Extremely detailed information on installed PC components
Cons
- User interface could be very dated
- Not intended as an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
This hardware monitoring tool is accessible for $59.95.
8. AMD Ryzen Master
In case your computer uses AMD processors and an AMD graphics card, it only is sensible to make use of an AMD monitoring tool to personalize the performance of those components.
AMD Ryzen Master has been designed to support a various range of CPU products and provide you with real-time control over your system performance. You should use it for overclocking and control voltage settings as well.
This tool also provides two views — Basic and Advanced, to toggle between the essential monitoring features and custom profiles.
Key features
- The essential view enables you to mechanically overclock your CPU and provides necessary system parameters like CPU usage, temperature, speed, and voltages.
- The advanced view allows as much as 4 profiles to store custom user-defined configurations for the CPU, graphics card, and RAM.
- Offers real-time monitoring and a histogram of per-core clock rates and temperature.
- Integrated Radeon™ GPU overclocking enables you to customize your graphics card performance.
Pros
- AMD focused monitoring and overclocking tool
- User interface is superb for presenting a whole lot of data with basic and advanced views for various user skill levels
Cons
- User interface will be overwhelming and takes time to learn
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
You’ll be able to download this PC monitoring software at no cost.
9. SolarWinds server and application monitor
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can provide you with greater insight into your application and server performance issues.
You’ll be able to run this app on a Windows server to get details about your core component’s performance.
Keeping enterprise networks in mind, this tool was designed to support a big selection of services, programs, and software. This implies you may control multi-vendor apps from a single console.
Key features
- Helps you monitor CPU usage, fan speed, server temperature, and power supply.
- Offers 1,200+ application monitoring templates to observe response time.
- Allows distant monitoring of FTP traffic and user activity to eliminate potential issues.
- Intelligent application monitoring alerts you when health indicators reach critical thresholds.
Pros
- Comprehensive network monitoring including network, systems and applications
- Effective notifications and visualization tools
Cons
- User interface not designed for consumer use
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite
Pricing
The licensing options of this server and app monitor start at $1,813.
10. SpeedFan
Speedfan is a no-frills computer monitoring tool that enables you to oversee your computer’s fan speeds. You can too manually adjust the fan speeds of various components in case your computer is susceptible to overheating.
This app also has a monitoring feature that informs you concerning the temperatures of your CPU, graphics card, and other peripheral devices.
Furthermore, advanced users can use this tool to get customized overheating warnings, SMART system statistics, and power usage of every fan.
Key features
- Shows hard disc temperatures and related information.
- Changes the FSB (front-side-bus) speed on some hardware.
- Has access to digital temperature sensors and changes fan speeds to scale back noise.
- Works well with different Windows versions like Vista, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2012.
Pros
- Good PC monitoring functionality focused on fan speed monitoring and control
- More limited sensor tracking could also be less overwhelming for brand new users
Cons
- User interface is amazingly dated
- Not intended to be an all-in-one consumer PC monitoring suite, because it has no RGB control and only basic component monitoring
Pricing
You’ll be able to download this PC monitoring tool at no cost.
Now that we have now explored one of the best monitoring tool options, let’s go over some computer monitoring basics.
What’s PC monitoring software?
PC monitoring or hardware monitoring software analyzes and reports periodic information it collects from the core components.
The core components of a pc include:
- Motherboard.
- CPU (Central Processing Unit).
- GPU (Graphics Processing Unit or Graphics card).
- RAM (Random Access Memory).
- Storage drives.
The hardware monitoring tool then displays this information in real-time graphs.
Moreover, let’s suppose there’s an unexpected system error within the goal device. In that case, your computer monitoring software will notify you about it before it results in any hardware malfunctions or a whole system crash.
Monitoring software can also be crucial for corporations who need to conduct distant PC monitoring on their employees’ systems.
Why?
These tools can relay the PC activity or data points of a distant computer via the cloud and let your IT department handle system errors without physically inspecting the worker PC.
Listed below are among the data points that hardware monitoring can provide:
- CPU (Central Processing Unit) Usage: The period of time a goal device uses its CPU for processing instructions of a program or operating system. CPU monitoring can aid you discover overactive CPU usage.
- Core temperature: The temperature of a running CPU. Your CPU temperature should remain as little as possible. If not, it could lead on to a system crash and permanently damage the processor.
- Fan speed: Computers have fans for actively cooling different components. For optimal use, you’ll want to adjust the fan speed to balance out the noise and performance of your device.
- Voltages: Knowing the ability supplied to different computer parts is crucial for computer monitoring as each over and under voltage can impact your server or PC.
- Memory utilization: Together with CPU usage, you furthermore mght need to observe excessive cache memory usage because it could decrease system performance.
- Physical disk space: It’s the utmost amount of information a disc or drive can hold. A monitoring tool can provide you with a heads up about low disc space or a faulty disk by displaying the typical response times of your PC.
- Event logs: These are records for network safety which can be registered within the background. You should use these event logs when any system error occurs, like a failed drive or hot temperature. They can even inform you about any suspicious activity on a goal device.
- Network monitoring: Identifies cabling issues or defective hardware which will affect your network bandwidth.
Despite the fact that a pc can handle a few of these errors by itself, issues like high temperatures must be identified early to safeguard your system’s performance.
And that’s where computer monitoring software might help.
Listed below are some core functionalities your computer monitoring software should give you the chance to do:
- Send alerts on critical component statuses.
- Scan and create a hardware inventory.
- Perform system configuration checks to optimize hardware performance.
- Allow event logging and comply with data protection standards.
- Monitor servers, desktops, routers, and switches.
- Allow distant device management.
- Either be a free tool or offer a free trial.
Wrapping up
Computer hardware is susceptible to malfunctioning eventually. Nevertheless, your startup or large business can all the time stay a step ahead and stop system crashes by closely monitoring your hardware.
All of the monitoring solutions mentioned in our list can do the aforementioned tasks and supply detailed details about your system performance.
You should use our above software list and suggestions to seek out a monitoring tool that suits your needs.
