HWMonitor 1.55.0

Winner Best software in 2014 - System info.

Overview

HWMonitor is an advanced hardware monitoring application that reads and displays the attributes of all of your computer's built-in sensors, including those that detect fan speeds, temperatures, voltages, and memory usage. By providing detailed analysis of your computer's performance within a simplistic interface this software serves as a useful diagnostic and repair tool for both computer professionals and typical home users.

Installation

Installing HWMonitor is as fast and simple as utilizing its simplistic interface to view analytical data. Despite its powerful computer monitoring capabilities, the software only consumes about 4 MB of disk space and occupies very little random access memory. During the installation you may be asked whether you want to install a third party toolbar, but doing so is not mandatory to complete the setup process.

Interface

The user interface is shockingly simple, with only four menus located at the top of the main window – File, Edit, View, and Help. No user input is required to display the computer's health information, as the data is already shown as soon as the application is launched. Detailed analysis for each hardware component is listed in an expandable tab view, so you can quickly view various aspects of the computer's temperature, fan speed, processor utilization, and graphics card performance, with all data categorized by device.

Pros

• Simplifies the process of diagnosing computer hardware problems by indicating performance problems in an easy-to-understand manner

• Eliminates the need to manually find hardware data from separate locations within the operating system by centralizing all of this information in a self-explanatory layout

• Supports special hardware monitors like Gigabyte ODIN and Abit uGuru

• Utilizes S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology) to read temperatures, fan speeds, and other important operating data like voltages. The software also has the ability to display performance statistics for almost all major USB hard drives, as well as the assembly, temperature, and airflow of the HDD

• Displays the fan speeds of every fan within the computer

• Monitors and displays almost all modern video cards sensors

• Supports all of the most common sensor chips on the market, including Winbond ICs and the ITE IT87 series

• CPUID System Monitoring Development Kit can be downloaded separately and used to customize the program's usage or integrate HWMonitor's PC health monitoring engine into other applications

Cons

• Doesn't include extensive help documentation. However, the software requires no input on behalf of the user, so help documentation is not really necessary.

Alternatives

There are plenty of other Windows applications that are designed to monitor and display PC health statistics, including but not limited to Open Hardware Monitor, Core Temp, smcFanControl (Mac), Real Temp, and SpeedFan. Of these alternatives, Open Hardware Monitor is by far the most popular, as it is an open source application that has many of the same features as HWMonitor.

Conclusion

Even though this application does not include adequate help documentation, the effort-free functionality and easy-to-read data make it an ideal solution for anyone who is trying to monitor the health of their computer's hardware.

Winner Best software in 2014 - System info.