Recommend a free temperature-monitoring utility for cores + video card, on Vista?

Question

Looking for your recommendations for a free temperature-monitoring utility, for my PC (Core 2) and graphics card for Vista.

(Question reposted with the hyperlinks now I have >10 reputation).

I don't want all the geeky details, I don't overclock, I don't see the need to mess with my fan speeds or motherboard settings, I just want something fairly basic to help with basic troubleshooting of intermittent overheats on video card and/or mobo:

• must run on Windows Vista (yes, don't laugh).
• ideally displays temperature when minimized to toolbar, and/or:
• automatically alerts me when temperature on either core or the video card exceeds a threshold
• ideally measures temperature of video card and system as well, not just the cores. HDD temperature is not necessary I think.
• logging is nice, graphs are also nice
• portability to Linux and Mac is nice

Apparently Everest is the best paid option, but I'm not prepared to spend $40. I found the following free options, but no head-to-head at-a-glance comparison:

1. CoreTemp (only does cores, not video card?)
2. Open Hardware Monitor (nice graphs, displays when minimized to toolbar, no alerts)
3. RealTemp (has alerts, works minimized, lightweight install)
4. HWMonitor (no alerts, CNET: "[free version is] simple but effective") from CPUID
5. CPUCool (not free: 21-day trialware, then $18)
6. SpeedFan from Almico (too geeky, detail overload; CNET: "most users won't be able to make head or tail of the data this utility provides")
7. Motherboard Monitor (CNET: not recommended, requires expert knowledge of your mobo, dangerous)
8. Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (only does cores, not video card? has logging)

Useful discussions I found: hardwarecanucks.com , superuser.com 1, 2 , forums.techarena.in

(Update: I downloaded Real Temp 3.60 and it meets all my needs, the customizable alert temperature is great. Open Hardware Monitor seems to be the other one that mostly meets my needs, except no alerts; but it is portable. I tried SpeedFan but the interface is very cluttered, too much unnecessary detail (needs a Basic/Advanced mode and a revamp of the interface.)

The answer to my underlying issue is nVidia Geforce LE 7500 video card which runs very hot.)

Answer 1

Being the author of the Open Hardware Monitor I will quickly comment on that one:

The Open Hardware Monitor can display all sensors in the system tray or on a desktop gadget. To add a sensor to the system tray or the gadget right-click on the sensor and enable the corresponding option. To show the gadget you need to enable it as well in the View menu. Of course these displays work also when you minimize to taskbar or to system tray.

An alert feature hasn't been implemented yet in the Open Hardware Monitor, but it is planned. As the software is open source you could of course implement any alerting feature yourself.

Answer 2

I know you already listed and rejected SpeedFan. I like it and use it. It's simple to set up and you can easily ignore the features you don't need. It minimizes to the "tray" and displays system temperatures. It will alarm when thresholds are exceeded.

Answer 3

For troubleshooting, you could consider a liveCD of Fedora or Ubuntu, just run it off the CD until you know where the issue is, you don't HAVE to install it. Unfortunately I don't know which utilities would monitor the graphics card, as all the pc's I have are just using the cheap motherboard graphics.

Answer 4

Check out CPUID's HWMonitor. I've been using it for a while now and I'm pretty satisfied with it. Nothing fancy but it does the basic things pretty well.