By Evan 
You don’t want your laptop to overheat. That’s why you need to know how to check your laptop’s temperature. We’ll show you the different ways to do that in this guide.
Your laptop has a lot of electronic components in a small space, and there will always be a buildup of heat. So if your laptop “runs hot” on a regular basis, you’ll soon run into problems.
Your central processing unit (CPU) is the most demanding working chip in your laptop and the one most prone to overheating. Therefore, it’s possible that it’ll fail if you don’t fix an overheating problem.
By monitoring your laptop’s temperature, you can take steps to solve overheating problems.
5 Ways to Check Laptop Temperature
Summary – How to check laptop temperature?
- Use the Core Temp application. Download it here.
- Use the HWMonitor application. Download it here.
- Use the Open Hardware Monitor application. Download it here.
- Use the Speccy application. Download it here.
- Use the BIOS on your laptop to check laptop temperature.
Continue to read more in detail about each way on how to check laptop temperature.
1. The Core Temp Application
Core Temp is a free application that lets you check the temperature of your laptop CPU.
While other temperature checking apps examine various components of your laptop, Core Temp focuses on the most important component, which is your CPU.
When you use Core Temp, you’ll learn everything about your CPU.
You’ll learn the CPU name, the cores it has, and of course its operating temperature.
If your CPU has more than one core (most modern laptops do), Core Temp will show the temperature of each core.
Core Temp has a feature that lets you view the overall CPU temperature in the taskbar of Windows.
2. The HWMonitor Application
If you want to know more about your laptop’s basic performance than Core Temp gives you, you can use the free application HWMonitor for Windows.
You’ll get comprehensive information about your CPU and the temperatures each core is running on a single screen.
HWMonitor also provides information about the voltages of each CPU core.
As for the temperature of CPU, you’ll see the current temperature each core is running at, as well as the minimum and maximum temperature values.
You can also view other information with this app. It’s a very lightweight and useful tool.
3. The Open Hardware Monitor Application
Another free application that will display a lot of information about your CPU and your graphics processor unit (GPU) is the .
Another free application that displays a lot of information about your CPU and your graphics processing unit (GPU) is Open Hardware Monitor.
Open Hardware Monitor also shows other details, such as the speed of your fans and the voltages of the main components.
As you’d expect, you can see the current temperature of your CPU cores and the overall system, and there are also minimum and maximum values.
You can easily add any of these temperatures to your taskbar so you can monitor temperatures at a glance.
There is a 32-bit and a 64-bit version of this app, and you can use it from Windows XP.
4. The Speccy Application
Speccy is an excellent tool for your laptop. There is a free version and a premium version that gives you advanced information.
You just need to download the free version to keep an eye on the temperature of your CPU and other important components.
Just open the Speccy app and it’ll tell you all the important information about your laptop.
You’ll see the CPU temperatures, the temperature of your motherboard, the GPU temperature and even the temperature of the internal storage devices.
As with the other temperature control apps, you can add different temperatures, such as your CPU.
You can easily open your taskbar and monitor them without having to open the app.
5. Using your Laptop BIOS to Check CPU Temperature
Every laptop has BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) and you can probably see the temperature of your CPU by accessing your BIOS configuration.
Your BIOS is critical to the operation of your laptop and we recommend that you don’t change any of the settings or your laptop will stop working properly.
When you restart or power up your laptop, there is an option to enter your BIOS.
Once your computer starts (you need to be quick), you need to press the appropriate key on your keyboard to enter BIOS. This can be F2, F10, or the Del key. It’s also usually written on the screen when you are booting up your laptop.
If you can’t find it, you need to check how to enter BIOS for your laptop. Often easily done by searching on your laptop model + BIOS on google.
Once you enter the BIOS program, you’ll see tabs for various elements of your system.
There is probably a tab CPU, which you can access with your keyboard. If this is present, you should be able to see the current temperature of your CPU.
Note that your CPU isn’t under much load since you aren’t running your operating system at this time. However, if the temperature is high, this could indicate an error.
Does Your Laptop Feel Hot?
If your laptop is running at optimal temperature, you don’t need to check it regularly.
But how do you know?
One of the easiest ways to check your laptop’s temperature is to touch it.
Put your hand on the surface of your laptop once it’s turned on. Try different spots to see if there are any obvious heat spots.
Your laptop will always generate heat, so it’s nothing to worry about if it’s warm. But if your laptop feels like it’s on fire, you have a problem.
If you’ve noticed that your laptop is overheating, you need to figure out how to check its operating temperature.
You need to know how hot your CPU and other major components are getting, because that affects your laptop’s performance and lifespan.
Luckily, there are several free apps we wrote about above you can download and install to check your laptop’s temperature.
What Temperature is Bad for Your Laptop?
There are many different laptops, all with different specifications. So when you check the temperature of your CPU, you need to know what is good and what isn’t.
If you see that your CPU has a temperature of 43°, how do you know if that is OK or not?
You need to know what CPU your laptop is.
Go to the website of the manufacturer of your laptop and search for this information.
The manufacturer may provide temperature information that will help you. If not, you can search for the maximum temperature under which your CPU can be operated.
What you’re looking for here is the maximum operating temperature for your CPU. Once you have found this out, you should make sure that the operating temperature of your CPU is always below this temperature.
Sometimes a “T junction” temperature is given. If this is the case, you should make sure that the operating temperature of your CPU is about 30º below this value.
Some laptop owners think they can check their computer’s temperature in Windows 10, but that’s not the case. Windows 10 is a great operating system that lets you do many things, but checking the temperature of your CPU isn’t one of them.
What can you do if your Laptop is Overheating?
If you find that your CPU is overheating when using the above applications, you need to lower the temperature. The easiest way to lower the temperature of your laptop, is to use fewer applications at the same time. Close the ones you are not using at the moment!
Your CPU has a heat sink and a fan. If the fan is clogged with dust, this can reduce its performance. Clean your laptop regularly to prevent this.
You can buy a cooling pad for your laptop to lower the temperature of critical components.
A cooling pad contains additional fans to to keep your laptop cooler. These devices are effective and usually inexpensive.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we showed you how to check your laptop’s temperature. But of course, your CPU is the most important component, and some good free apps will show you the overall temperature and core temperatures.
Do everything you can to lower your laptop’s operating temperature.
An overheated laptop can fail very quickly. At best, you’ll find that your device doesn’t work as well as it should.
Use these simple apps to monitor your laptop’s temperature and take the right action when your device gets too hot.