Performance Monitor 3.8

Performance monitor is a simple graphical representation of current system load. Each color box represents a different aspect of the load.

The boxes can be moved around to form any different configuration.

It can monitor CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network.

The colors are customizable.

It can also show any of the load aspects in the system tray. It is small, light on resources, will always stay on top, and can have transparency.

There are other themes as well:

Performance Monitor is available here.

CPU Burn-in

While Prime95 is really one of the best ways to stress test a cpu, cpu burn-in is great for just heating a processor. When a simple temperature reading is needed to determine if a particular clockspeed is a viable option, CPU Burn-in is a small and easy program to accomplish this.

Like Prime95, error checking is an option, and unlike Prime95, tests can be timed to stop after a certain period of time. Each instance is one thread, and multiple instances can be started. The only con I have found with this program is that while it keeps the processor at 100%, it does not create as much heat as Prime95. This program is only 20KB, and is available here.

Prime95

When overclocking, its necessary to stress test to determine the stability of any system. This is where cpu stress testing comes in. Prime95 is generally considered the best stress testing program for overclockers. When increasing clockspeed and voltage, errors can be introduced in a processor's output. Prime95 has a torture test mode which checks prime testing calculations against known results. A good way to run tests is to run a 15min small fft test on a certain clockspeed, and up the speed if there is no error. Once an error occurs at a specific speed, lower the speed and run a 30min test. If its stable, run a 2 hour test. If there is an issue, lower the speed again and repeat. If its stable, run a 24hour test. Any issues and the speed should be lowered, no issues for 24hours usually means that the speed is stable.

Prime95 can also join the distributed computing search for mersenne primes(primes of the form 2^n -1).

Prime95 25.6
Official Download Site(version 24)