Any component, when it reaches a high temperature, lowers its performance to prevent itself from any damage. This is called thermal throttling. Your PC components could suffer from thermal throttling when it lacks proper airflow, when it is overclocked, or if your thermal paste is dried up.
Your hardware has a high chance of degrading if it continues to operate at a high temperature, especially your CPU. However, the built-in protection does shut down the entire processor in case the CPU reaches extreme temperature.
If you want your system to last longer, we always recommend you keep tabs on all hardware temperatures. Here, in this article, we have mentioned few reliable ways to monitor your CPU temp.
Table of Contents
What Happens If My CPU Temp Is Too Hot?
High CPU usage is not always a problem, as the CPU is meant to process all tasks once the computer turns on. However, CPU reaching extreme temperature is a serious issue, depending on CPU usage.
- Random system crash
- Decrease in CPU performance
- CPU bottleneck
What Increases CPU Temperature?
CPU under high usage usually produces intense heat. On top of that, the CPU handles all graphics-intensive tasks if the system does not have a dedicated GPU. This will result in the CPU exceeding the maximum temperature limit.
Besides this, some common reasons the CPU temperature rises are listed below.
- Dried Thermal Paste
- High overall room temperature
- Poor system fan configuration
- Overclocked CPU
- Performing graphics-intensive tasks without a dedicated GPU
- Poor air circulation inside the PC
How to Check CPU Temp Windows 11?
You can either check CPU temperature from BIOS or by using hardware monitoring tools.
Using BIOS
A motherboard’s BIOS contains all the details about the system’s health. And this includes CPU and system temperatures, voltage, and fan speed.
Getting Into BIOS
Depending on the motherboard manufacturer, you can get into BIOS in multiple ways. In most computers, pressing the Delete key repeatedly during startup prompts you to BIOS. Refer to the motherboard or laptop user manual to get into BIOS.
Check CPU Temp
Once inside BIOS, follow the steps mentioned below.
- Now, search for settings named H/W monitor in your BIOS.
- Under PC Health Status, you can get CPU temperature, system temperature, fan speed, and voltage details.
Although the BIOS gives you the real-time CPU temperature, it is not possible to get the temperature during maximum CPU usage. This means that when the system reaches BIOS, its temperature already lowers.
Therefore, we always recommend using a hardware monitoring application to get an accurate CPU temperature.
Using Hardware Monitor Application
Hardware monitoring applications are a great way to get a real-time temperature reading. You can not only check CPU and GPU but, overall system temperature as well. Here, we have discussed a few hardware monitoring applications.
MSI AfterBurner
MSI Afterburner provides you with a graphical interface that provides all your CPU core’s temperatures. Like HWMonitor, it also includes CPU core usage, clock speed, and power. The application also lets the user limit GPU temperature and fan speed as well.
- Install and run MSI Afterburner.
- Now, click on the monitor icon on the left side of the Afterburner window.
- Here, along with CPU usage, you can also see all core temperatures.
Core Temp
Core temperature not only measures the CPU temperature but also gets information about all the individual cores from your CPU. Besides this, you can also get its power consumption, power load, and frequency.
Install and run Core Temp. Under temperature reading, you can see all your core’s temperatures.
HWiNFO
HWiNFO is a great application to not only get details about hardware temperature but also the system details. This includes information about CPU processors, motherboards, video adapters, and many more.
- First, download and install HWiNFO.
- Run the application and go to the Sensors tab.
- Here, you can get maximum, minimum, and average CPU temperatures.
CPUID HWMonitor
HWMonitor also measures data from sensors on the motherboard and displays accurate temperature readings. Along with this, it also measures the hard drive’s read-write speed, CPU clock speed, power, GPU usage, etc.
- Install and run the application.
- Expand your CPU.
- Here, expand Temperatures to check real-time CPU temperature.
- Furthermore, expand Cores (Max) to read each core’s exact temperature.
Related Question
What Is Normal CPU Temp?
Depending on CPU usage, its temperature will vary. On idle, your CPU’s ideal temperature should be below 35°C. But temperature under 45 °C is also considered good enough unless it exceeds this limit.
On half-load (50%), the temperature should be around 50°C to 65°C. Whereas on full load, the temperature should not exceed 80°C.
If the CPU temp is beyond these limits, you might want to perform the necessary measures to lower CPU temperature.
How to Keep CPU Temp Down?
Several things contribute to rising in CPU temperature. An increase in CPU usage, the dust settled on heat sink or fans, and dried up thermal paste are only some of the reasons that CPU faces high-temperature issues.
To fix this, you can try the following fixes.
- Clear unwanted background application
- Turn off V-Sync
- Re-apply thermal paste
- Clear dust from PC
- Disable overclocking
- Improve airflow inside the PC case
