Core Temp

Pros

• Succeeds in its mission of providing a simple, lean, temperature-monitoring program.
• Great stability and accurate reporting.

Cons

• Some users will need a more fully featured alternative.
• Installer can leave a PC with unwanted "adware" if users are not careful.

Core Temp is a simple utility for monitoring the temperature of a computer's central processing unit. Of greatest interest to those who overclock and are interested in performance issues, there are, in fact, a wide variety of programs that can provide this sort of information. Core Temp distinguishes itself through its simplicity and low resource use, traits that are often lacking in the alternatives.

This almost necessarily means that Core Temp is lacking in many features that are common in those other programs. The average temperature-monitoring program available today includes support for reading a wide variety of motherboard-based temperature, voltage, and fan speed sensors, but Core Temp does not. Instead, Core Temp focuses solely on reading and displaying temperatures from the on-chip diodes that Intel and AMD include in their modern processors.

For many, this a much-appreciated tradeoff. Many PC performance enthusiasts doubt the worth of most of the temperature readouts built into motherboards and feel much more confident about the sensors that are incorporated directly into CPUs. For people in this camp, Core Temp's narrow focus makes plenty of sense, especially insofar as it pays off with lower memory consumption and quicker startup.

Others may find this less attractive. Owners of computers with AMD processors, for example, often report widely varying readings and calibration issues with the diodes built into those CPUs. In fact, AMD processors typically only provide temperature readings for a single core, despite containing as many as eight of these. For these users, it may make sense to use a temperature monitoring solution that provides support for motherboard sensors instead of the relatively lean and focused Core Temp.

This is not necessarily a knock against Core Temp, though. The utility is meant to satisfy a need that would otherwise go unfulfilled, and it does so relatively well. It is hard to complain about the price tag, either, as Core Temp is available for free, a fairly common thing in the world of monitoring software. One downside of this arrangement is that Core Temp is installed through a program which, if allowed to, will also install an ever-changing variety of advertisement-displaying software, this being a way for the developer to make some money through the program without directly charging for it. It is easy enough to opt out of installing these "enhancements," though, and most people savvy enough to bother installing Core Temp will remember to do so.

Pros

• Succeeds in its mission of providing a simple, lean, temperature-monitoring program.
• Great stability and accurate reporting.

Cons

• Some users will need a more fully featured alternative.
• Installer can leave a PC with unwanted "adware" if users are not careful.