Find On-Board Graphics Card Temperature on Windows 10
Keeping your system running at a normal temperature, or keeping it from getting too hot is as elementary as keeping the system dry (and away from liquids/spills). Normally, when we talk about the temperature of a system, we examine the temperature of two hardware components; the CPU and the GPU.
These two components are important but they’re not the only ones that can get hot from intense use. If you have a GPU on your system, you essentially have two graphics cards; an on-board graphics card and a dedicated card.
The on-board graphics card gets hot too but you may never know how hot it gets since there aren’t many tools that are built to find the temperature of the on-board graphics card. If you don’t have a dedicated GPU, the on-board graphics card is going to be handling everything and you need to know how hot it is to keep it from being damaged.
Temperature sensors
In order to find the temperature of any component on your system, it must have its own temperature sensors. GPUs always have a temperature sensor since they’re going to be subject to intense use and will be handling heavy tasks. On-board graphics cards generally never have a temperature sensor.
The closest thing or the closest sensor that can give you an estimate of your graphics’ card is the temperature of the CPU however, let’s first check to see if, on the off chance, your on-board graphics card has its own temperature sensor.
View temperature sensors on system
In order to view which devices have a temperature sensor, follow the steps below.
- Download and run a free app called GPU-Z.
- Go to the Sensors tab.
- Look through the list and see if there’s anything related to the on-board graphics card.
On-board graphics card temperature
In the absence of a temperature sensor, you have to rely on other sensors. They will not give you an accurate reading of the on-board graphics’ temperature but it will be enough to know how hot your on-board graphics card is running. In this case and in most cases, you should rely on the CPU temperature.
Find CPU temperature
Because we’re going by estimates here, it’s a good idea to check the temperature of all CPU cores. From the screenshot below, you can see that GPU-Z does show the CPU temperature but it gives you an aggregate value and not the individual cores’ values.
To find the temperature of individual CPU cores, follow these steps.
- Download, install, and run Core Temp.
- Look through the list of cores and note down the temperature for the cores.
- Take note of the highest and lowest temperatures for each core to get an estimate of the on-board graphics card’s temperature.
Adding temperature sensors
It isn’t possible to add a temperature sensor to your on-board graphics card. If you find that it often runs too hot, you should try thermal paste, making sure your system sits in a well-ventilated spot, and ensure the fans on the system are running. You can add additional fans to a desktop system.
You should know that on-board graphics cards aren’t meant to handle heavy tasks. If you rely on it to handle graphics-intensive tasks, you should consider getting a GPU. They’re expensive but come in low, mid, and higher price ranges. If you continue to rely on the on-board graphics card, your system may become unstable if it overheats, it may eventually suffer hardware damage.
