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Learning how to monitor CPU temperature is the simplest way to know whether your PC is healthy — a quick check tells you if the chip is cool, warm or overheating, and whether your cooler is doing its job. It takes a minute to set up, and it can save you from a throttling chip, a noisy PC or a dead cooler you never noticed.
Why monitor CPU temperature?
Temperature is the first sign that something is wrong. A chip that runs hot will slow itself down, which means lower frame rates and slower renders — our CPU benchmarks explained guide shows how temperature limits the score. A chip that runs hot for years will also wear out faster — see our how long a desktop CPU lasts guide. And if you overclock, temperature is the number that tells you whether the overclock is safe — our step-by-step overclocking guide uses it at every step.
What temperature is normal?
As a rough guide for a desktop CPU: at idle, 30–45°C is normal; while gaming, 60–75°C is normal; under a full stress test, anything under 85°C is fine. Most chips start throttling at around 95–100°C, and they shut down above that. Our why is my CPU overheating guide explains what each range means, and a 14900K will run hotter than a Ryzen 7 9700X at the same load, because it uses more power. Laptops run hotter than desktops by design — see our best laptop CPU for battery life guide — so do not panic if a laptop hits 90°C under load.
How to check CPU temperature
There are four easy ways. The BIOS shows the temperature at idle, although it is not much use under load. Windows Task Manager shows the temperature on some systems, but not on all of them. The best way is a free monitoring tool — a small program that reads the temperature sensor inside the CPU and shows it in real time, often with a graph. And if your motherboard or graphics card has its own software, that usually shows the temperature too. Our best CPU benchmark software guide lists the tools that include temperature monitoring, and our how to benchmark your CPU guide shows you how to run a stress test while you watch the temperature.
How to monitor while gaming
To watch the temperature while you play, use an on-screen overlay — a small readout in the corner of the screen that shows the temperature, the frame rate and the CPU usage while you play. Set it up once, play your usual games for an hour, and look at the highest temperature reached. If the chip stays under 85°C, your cooling is fine; if it regularly hits 95°C, it is time to clean the cooler or check the paste — see our how to apply thermal paste correctly guide. Our CPU cooling basics guide explains what to do if the cooler is the problem.
What to do if the temperature is too high
If the temperature is too high, work through the fixes in order: clean the dust out of the cooler and the case, check that the cooler is mounted evenly and the fan is spinning, replace the thermal paste if it is more than two or three years old, and check the case airflow. If none of that helps, the cooler may be too small for the chip — see our how to choose the right CPU cooler guide and our best CPU cooler for gaming guide. And if you overclocked, step back to stock settings first — our how to fix an unstable overclock guide shows how.
The bottom line
Monitoring CPU temperature is a habit worth having: check it once when you build the PC, check it again when the seasons change, and check it whenever the PC feels slow or loud. A cool chip is a fast, quiet, long-lived chip. Browse our cooling guides and our troubleshooting guides for the next steps.
