There are a number of things that can be dangerous for the sensitive components that make up your computer, and one of these is heat. Your processor in particular is especially sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, and it possible for permanent damage to be caused if heat levels rise too much. Real Temp is a free tool that provides at-a-glance information about your CPU temperature so you can protect your valuable hardware.

To make it easy to keep an eye on the temperature of your processor without the need to keep switching to a dedicated program window, Real Tempt adds a constantly updated icon to the notification area of the taskbar. This can be configured to display the current temperature, the maximum temperature and a number of other types of information.

Additional information can be accessed by displaying the main program window by double clicking the notification area icon , including CPU load and speed as well as benchmarks and testing options. While the information that is provided will be of use to almost any computer user, it will be of particular interest to anyone who has indulged in overclocking.

To save you from having to constantly look at the temperature readouts to ensure that nothing is going awry, it is possible to configure alarms that are triggered if heat levels reach a particular point. This option can be used to monitor not only your CPU temperature, but also the temperature of your GPU and you can opt to launch a specific program at this time to either alert you to the temperature or take evasive action.

Note that Real Temp is a portable app with no installer.