[Every month I'll write an article related to getting quality free tools on the internet, which can improve your computing experience and give you peace of mind. Sorry Mac and Linux users, I'm only looking at Windows operating systems here.]

Performance monitoring tools are exceedingly useful when your PC is on its last legs and you're considering some over-clocking, or you just want to keep an eye on things. A good quality BIOS will tell you temperature statistics that you're looking for, but that's no good when you want to view statistics during maximum power consumption. Naturally, unless your wallet is bursting at the seams, you'll want a monitor that is free and offers superior functionality. Although you won't need more than one temperature monitor, I still detail quite a few different varieties here as personal preference is key.

There are numerous Windows sidebar gadgets available to download that will monitor your PC's performance, they're often quite basic and will show you percentages of CPU, GPU, or RAM usage (some show all three in a singular gadget). As a downside, many Windows Vista users have complained that the gadgets tool bar can cause their CPU to work at 50% whilst idle depending on the number of gadgets you use.

Speed Fan is another tool I have tested and it can be quite useful but also has some annoying faults. In Speed Fan, you're able to monitor the temperature of your CPU and GPU (or 2 GPU's in my case). It also has a monitor for CPU usage which gets split into smaller bars depending on the number of cores you have (showing you each core load). Next to these bars, it denotes in percentage your overall usage.

Additionally, it has a page for you to over clock your computer. It does warn users that it's an advanced feature and you shouldn't use it if you don't know what you're doing but CPU over clocking should be done from the BIOS. The other working feature in this program is the "Charts" page. This page allows you to select from a list of which components you want displayed on the graph, although it is limited to showing you CPU, GPU and system temperatures.