Number 266 - July 2005

Motherboard Monitor
Computer Users Group of Greeley
You may not be aware that the inside of your PC can easily be come as hot as the inside of your car on a hot, summer day. Without adequate ventilation, the heat can play havoc with your hardware, shortening the lifespan of the CPU and other hardware components.    Chances are that if you purchased a name-brand PC from a company such as Dell or Gateway, it will have adequate ventilation in the form of fans, hoods, and other devices to draw excess heat away from the CPU, memory chips, video card, etc. For generic PCs, or PCs that have been extended with the addition of hardware such as a second hard drive or CD-ROM drive or a faster CPU, there may not be adequate protection in your PC.	A free program called Motherboard Monitor (MBM) provides a I means of monitoring the temperature inside your computer whenever you are running Windows. If you have a sufficiently recent motherboard, MBM can access information sensors relating to the current temperature inside your PC, as well as the voltage levels and fan speeds. The information can be logged to a file on a regular basis for later review. If you have particular concern about voltage or temperature problems, MBM may also be configured to display a warning or alarm when there may be a problem.    MBM is available at LiveWIRE. Be aware that the documentation assumes the reader has at least a fundamental understanding of the internal workings of the PC.
Number 266 - July 2005