Is Open Hardware Monitor safe? [download & review]

July 2024 · 3 minute read

Our Review

Pros Open-source Easy to use No installation required Cons None

How to install Open Hardware Monitor

If you’re not a huge fan of setting up programs, you’re in luck. You don’t need to install Open Hardware Monitor on your PC since it’s a portable tool. This means that you can move it on removable storage media and run it from there.

More so, it won’t tamper with your Windows registry entries, nor will it create additional files or folders on your PC. You just unpack the archive it comes bundled in and launch the executable.

How to use Open Hardware Monitor

There’s no right or wrong way to use this program. After you launch it, this tool will display some useful insight regarding the hardware components of your system. These include CPU clocks, temperatures, load, powers, generic memory load and data usage, GPU voltages, clocks and temperatures, and the such.

You can easily view everything you’re interested in by scrolling down through the main window. Open Hardware Monitor organizes your hardware in a tree-view so that you can expand and collapse components according to your needs.

Additional features included

You can customize the range of devices this program accesses through the Hardware option in the File menu. Just check or uncheck the components as you wish, and the program will add or remove them from the main view.

More so, if you need a gadget for facile monitoring straight from your desktop, you can toggle its visibility from the View menu. You only need to assign a sensor to the gadget by right-clicking it and selecting “Show in Gadget” and you’re done.

Open Hardware Monitor CPU temp monitor

As you’d expect, there’s not exactly much to configure about Open Hardware Monitor. You can customize the program’s behavior straight from the Options menu, there’s no additional window or pane. It’s even possible to monitor your CPU temperature straight from your workspace, without switching to the app.

You can set the program to start minimized, minimize it to tray when closing the main window, run on startup, adjust the preferred temperature unit, plot location and logging interval, and also enable logging sensors or start a remote web server for keeping an eye on your PC even when you’re not close to it.

Open-source hardware monitor

All things considered, if you were ever curious about what’s going on with your system’s hardware, Open Hardware Monitor can help you scratch that itch without significant efforts. It’s a free, open-source tool, requires no installation, and provides you with a wide range of options.

You can toggle various components to be included or excluded from being monitored, or even start a remote web server if you need to monitor your system from a distance.

FAQ: learn more about Open Hardware Monitor

The short answer is yes. Not only this program can help you monitor most (if not all) of your sensor-friendly hardware components, but it’s also entirely free, safe, and requires no installation whatsoever.

Given that you don’t need to install this program on your computer to run it, you can easily remove it by deleting its directory. Make sure that the program isn’t running before you attempt this operation.

Unfortunately, you can’t adjust the speed of your fans using this program. However, you can take a look at our top 5 picks for fan speed changing software solutions if you need such a tool.

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