Obviously, CPU consumption is not representative of all the power consumed by your PC as a whole, but it can help you get an idea of this, as well as other things like applications or games that cause your power outage. .the consumption. In any case, doing it is really very simple and, in addition, free, so if you are interested, do not miss what we are going to tell you next.
Use Core Temp to find out how much your CPU is consuming
Core Temp is one of the oldest PC monitoring tools, since its first release dates back to April 24, 2006, when it was actually just a beta. In any case, it is a tool that has been with us for almost 17 years, and even today it continues to be one of the most used both for its lightness and for the usefulness it gives us. . Additionally, it continues to receive regular updates (the latest being December 4, 2022).
To know how much your CPU is consuming at any time, the first thing you need to do is download and install Core Temp from its website (it’s free, and in fact, if you want, you can download the version Stand Alone which does not need to install, but be careful if you are running this build on Windows 11 as the system will tell you it is unsafe… just ignore the warning as your PC is not in danger with her). When you run it, you’ll see a window similar to the one we put above, but logically showing you information about your processor.
Now go to the Options -> Settings menu, and a new window will open. There you can configure a lot of things, but we are specifically interested in two: the first is in the General tab and is called “Start Core Temp with Windows”: you have to check it if you want what we are going to do either always works for you, although it might not and it only works when you run the app manually. Basically, we’re going to run Core Temp on PC startup, nothing more.
Once done, go to the “Notification area” tab, and you will see some settings like this:
What you need to do is check the “Power consumption” option below, but when you do that, you will see that a lot of numbers will automatically appear in the Windows notification area, next to the clock, specifically one for each core of your processor. ; Since we also don’t want the antics notification area to fill up, what you should do now is check the “Icon only” option at the top of that window we were in. This way, only one number will be displayed, which, as you may have already guessed, is the number in watts of your processor’s consumption at any given time. Once done, click Apply and that’s it.
Normally, this Core Temp icon will remain hidden in Windows, but don’t worry because it’s very easy to make it always visible. To do this, right-click on the taskbar and click “Taskbar settings”. In the window that opens, search for “Taskbar corner overflow”, and there you will find “CPU temperature and system information utility”, this is what you must activate so that the icon that shows you the real-time consumption of your CPU.
What we have explained to you is for Windows 11. In Windows 10, it is exactly the same until you enter “Taskbar settings”, but the difference is that what you need to search for is “ Select the icons that will appear on the taskbar”. Here you can also disable the display of the Core Temp icon, so that only the consumption sensor is visible.
Once done, everything is ready: you can always see the consumption of your processor in real time thanks to this icon on the taskbar, what do you think?
