Temperature and Battery monitoring |

Battery monitoring (via BatteryMon) BurnInTest can work with another product from PassMark Software called BatteryMon. BatteryMon allows the charge level in laptop batteries and uninterruptible power supplies UPSs to be monitored. Turning on this feature will cause BurnInTest to log the battery statistics collected by BatteryMon. Both programs need to be active and running for this feature to work. Statistics collected will appear in the HTML, Text and binary log files, where they will be broken down on a per battery basis. There is also a summary charge level displayed in the main window. When specified in Logging preferences, temperature and battery information will also be reported each periodic log interval.

For more information about BatteryMon see the PassMark Software web site.

http://www.passmark.com/products/batmon.htm

Temperature monitoring

BurnInTest V6 supports temperature monitoring directly and also via many third party system monitoring applications currently available. By using BurnInTest with these applications, is it possible to Burn in your hardware while monitoring and logging the temperature of your CPU(s), motherboard and hard disks.

About BurnInTest temperature monitoring (directly - no 3rd part application)

BurnInTest provides 3 types of temperature sources:

1) Intel CPUs. Temperature average of CPU cores or a specific core. E.g.

• | "CPU 1 average": the average of the CPU core temperature values (e.g. the average temperatures of core 1 and core 2 on CPU 1);

• | "CPU 1 core 1": the temperature on core 1 of CPU 1;

2) AMD CPUs. Temperature average of CPU cores or a specific core. E.g.

• | "CPU 1": the CPU 1 package temperature values;

3) Hard Disks that support S.M.A.R.T.. E.g.

• | "HDD 0 (ST3160827AS)": Physical hard disk drive number 0 (model in brackets).

Most modern CPUs include a thermal monitoring capability for fan speed threshold triggering and CPU protection purposes. These are not highly accurate temperature sensors. CPU temperatures can generally be sourced directly from the CPU or from an external component on the Motherboard (e.g. a SuperIO chip). In all cases, the CPU temperature reported by BurnInTest is sourced directly from the CPU and this may vary from externally reported CPU temperatures. These values should be treated as approximate values. In general the CPU temperature is more accurate at higher temperatures (as this is when the CPU mainly utilizes the temperature monitoring), and less accurate at lower temperatures. Some Intel CPU temperatures less than 50C may mean little more than just that, the temperature is less than 50C. While the temperatures may have a high degree of error at lower temperatures, the values can still be quite useful in determining differences between temperatures, such as determining whether a different cooling solution leads to a higher or lower CPU temperature.

The CPU temperature calculation is specific to each type of CPU. The current version of BurnInTest supports the following CPUs:

• | Most Intel Core2, Atom and Core i7 CPUs,

• | AMD K10 and K11 CPUs (Opteron and Phenom).

The Hard disk drive (HDD) temperatures are sourced from the disk S.M.A.R.T. attributes. As such the disk needs to support S.M.A.R.T. - most modern HDD's do.

Both the CPU and HDD temperature monitoring requires BurnInTest be run with administrator privileges. In Vista (and later), this means "Elevated administrator" privileges are required.

About Intel Active Monitor

Versions tested with BurnInTest: 1.19

Intel Active Monitor monitors CPU temperatures, motherboard temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. It contains some system information and supports programmable alerts.

Intel Active Monitor is available from http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/active.htm

About Intel Desktop Utilities

Versions tested with BurnInTest: 3.0 and 2.1

Intel Desktop Utilities monitors CPU temperatures, motherboard temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. It contains some system information and supports programmable alerts. It is compatible with most newer Intel motherboards.

Intel Desktop Utilities is available from http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/idu/

About SpeedFan

Versions tested with BurnInTest: 4.08, 4.32, 4.35, 4.37

SpeedFan monitors CPU, motherboard, memory and HDD temperatures. It also monitors voltages and fan speeds. It allows the user to alter fan speeds to aid the over clocking enthusiast. It reports system information - in particular SM Bus info and SMART attributes.

SpeedFan is available from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

About Hmonitor

Versions tested with BurnInTest: 3.1.2.5 and 4.0.1.2

Hmonitor Pro monitors and displays hardware parameters collected by the several sensor chips, installed on certain motherboards. The program can monitor voltages, CPU temperature, Motherboard temperature and cooler fans RPMs. It is fully customizable with alarms that can be set to go off when the temperature goes too high. In addition to this there is a built in "thermo control" function, that kicks in when the CPU is idle. Hmonitor can be used under 2000/XP/Vista operating systems on Intel-based personal computers.

Hmonitor is currently available at http://www.hmonitor.com. PassMark also maintains a Web page that can tell you where to get Hmonitor.

http://www.passmark.com/products/temperature.htm

About MBM (Motherboard Monitor)

Versions tested with BurnInTest: 5.3.3.0 and 5.5.5.1

MBM monitors CPU temperatures, motherboard temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. It contains some basic system information and supports programmable alerts (also email alerts or application launch on alert), and logging. However several years ago, Alexander Van Kaam the developer of MBM, announced that development on Motherboard Monitor has been stopped due to lack of financial resources to purchase hardware and the difficult in getting technical details from the motherboard manufacturers. The web site has also now be closed. Copies of the software are still available on the Net however if you search for them.

General comments about using the 3rd party applications

In the case of each temperature monitoring application…

• | Check that your main board supports temperature monitoring. This can be done from the documentation that comes with the board / computer or from the manufacturers web page.

• | Ensure that the third party monitoring application is correctly installed. See below for a list of supported applications.

• | Check that third party monitoring application supports your motherboard. Each application comes with a list of supported boards. See below for more details on the supported applications.

• | Check that the third party monitoring application is a compatible version. See below for a list of compatible versions.

• | Run the third party monitoring application, then Run BurnInTest.

• | Make sure temperature monitoring is turned on in BurnInTest (from the Test preferences Window) and if required, the temperature source value is selected. For Hmonitor, up to two sources can be selected for display and logging in BurnInTest.

• | Start testing.

BurnInTest reads the CPU temperature values from the third party monitoring application, displaying them on the screen and writing them to disk if logging is turned on. Please bear in mind that the accuracy of the temperature values in BurnInTest depend entirely on the third party application in question.