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If you feel your computer is running too hot and increasing the ambient temperature of your room, you need to check all components' temperatures and see which one is causing the most trouble. The temp of a PC increases the most when gaming as all the components are being used intensely, including the GPU and CPU.
When a PC runs too hot, it throttles its performance during high-intensity tasks so that it runs cooler, and this is the last thing gamers want as it will reduce FPS and cause stuttering. A PC can also have multiple BSODs (Blue Screen of Deaths) or spontaneously shut down. This also means you cannot overclock your PC to improve performance, as this would heat the components up even more.
To keep your PC stable, you need to keep all temperatures in check and work on the components that heat the most. The best way to keep your PC cool is to dust it regularly and thoroughly so that there is efficient airflow that helps keep components cool.
How to check the temperature of your PC
Unfortunately, Windows does not offer any way to check the temperatures of all components. Although you can boot into your PC's BIOS where all the information is displayed, that's often too much work and does not allow you to monitor your PC in real-time. However, there are a lot of free trusted programs on the internet that allow you to do so.
How to check GPU temperature
Here are a few easy ways to check how hot your GPU is running.
- Task Manager: If you are on Windows 10, open the Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and clicking on "Task Manager." If you are on Windows 11, you can press "Ctrl+Shift+Esc" to do the same. Continue by clicking on "More Details" on the bottom left. Go to the "Performance" tab, and on the left, you will see your GPU (under which its temperature is displayed).
- AMD Radeon: If you have an AMD GPU, you can check your GPU temperature by opening your AMD software and clicking on the "Performance" tab. Here you will find information on the power consumption, fan speed, GPU clock speed, VRAM clock speed, and GPU temperature are displayed.
- NVIDIA GeForce Experience: If you have an Nvidia GPU, you can check the temperature by opening the installed software, clicking on the overlay settings button on the top right, and clicking on "Performance." A lot of GPU statistics will be displayed, including the temperature.
The GPU should not be running over 90 degrees Celsius under heavy load, and on idle, it should sit at 40 to 55 degrees Celsius.
How to check CPU temperature
Windows does not offer any way to check the CPU temperature, so here is a list of software that is trustworthy and free.
- HWMonitor
- Open Hardware Monitor
- Speccy
- NZXT Cam
All of the above software will display CPU information and more. They can be downloaded through their official websites.
Once installed, you will see the temperature of every core of your CPU, including an average reading of the whole package. You need to look at the core average and monitor it under heavy load to see how hot your CPU runs.
The normal CPU temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius when idle, the average is anywhere between 70 to 80 degrees Celsius under load, and anything higher than that is considered too hot.
