9 BEST Hardware Monitoring Software (2023)

By : Lawrence Williams Lawrence Williams
Hours Updated

A Hardware Monitoring tool is a centralized platform to monitor the health and performance of connected devices. This tool analyzes the periodic information collected from the core components and then displays it in real-time graphs. The app notifies you when an unexpected event occurs so you can rectify system issues before it crashes your computer system.

We have researched 50+ tools and selected the best hardware monitoring tool based on CPU Usage, Memory Utilization, Network Monitoring capabilities, etc. Here is an exclusive list of the 9 top Hardware monitoring software which are easy to configure, maintain, and install.

Best Hardware Monitoring Software: Top Picks!

Name Supported platforms Deployment Free Trial Link
SolarWinds Windows Private, Public, and Hybrid cloud environments. 30-days free Trial Learn More
Paessler Windows On-premises and cloud-based 30-days free Trial Learn More
ManageEngine Web-based and Cloud-based On-premises, SaaS 30-days free Trial Learn More
Site24x7 Windows, Linux, MacOS Private, public, and hybrid cloud environments 30-day Free Trial Learn More
Restoro Windows N/A Lifetime Free Basic Plan Learn More
Expert Advice:

“ Make sure the hardware monitoring tool you select tracks the metrics that are critical to your IT infrastructure. It’s prudent to exploit the free trial of the hardware monitoring tools before hitting the buy button.”

1) SolarWinds

Best for Agentless Server Monitoring

SolarWinds is a hardware monitoring tool that helps you to resolve issues faster through reports and intelligent alerts. It helps you to monitor cloud infrastructures like Azure and AWS IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. It also helps optimize resource utilization and prevents outages with a hardware monitor.

SolarWinds

Features:

  • Use a hardware monitor to prevent performance issues caused by hardware failure.
  • Monitor multi-vendor applications, servers, and more through a single dashboard.
  • Manage a diversified IT infrastructure with ease from a single customizable screen.
  • You can prevent outages by monitoring hardware fan speed, CPU load, memory, etc.
  • It helps you to diagnose server hardware downtime and system performance issues.
  • You can detect and track hardware and software configuration changes to solve issues more quickly.

Pros

  • It helps you to find which network application uses the most bandwidth.
  • Offers visual analysis for a device with a delivery path
  • It helps you to monitor the logical component of the SDN (Software Defined Networking) environment.
  • Easy integration with Amazon AWS, Apache Tomcat, Microsoft Office 365, Apache ActiveMQ, etc.

Cons

  • Does not have strong integration with 3rd party products.
  • Pricing plans are not very cost-effective.

Key Specs:

Pricing: Plans Start at $245 to monitor 10 devices.
Deployment: Private, Public, and Hybrid cloud environments.
Supported platforms: Windows
Free Trial: 30-day free Trial

Visit SolarWinds >>

2) Paessler

Best lightweight monitoring tool

Paessler is one of the best server hardware monitoring tools known for its advanced infrastructure management capabilities. It helps you supervise the entire IT infrastructure using advanced technologies like SNMP, HTTP requests, Pings, SSH, and much more. Moreover, PRTG displays all memory capacities on just one dashboard.

Paessler

Features:

  • You can monitor CPU, RAM, Hard Drives, Printers, Routers, Switches, and more.
  • It helps you to keep an eye on all your hardware and network devices.
  • Extra sensors are included to monitor servers and applications.
  • It has a protocol analyzer that identifies high-traffic applications.
  • PRTG displays all memory capacities in s single dashboard
  • Automatic diagnosis of your hard disks
  • PRTG informs you before reaching the disk space limit

Pros

  • Its dashboard provides color-coded graphs of live data from your network monitoring system.
  • You can monitor a diverse range of devices with SNMP.
  • It has many alert mediums like emails, SMS, and third-party integrations.

Cons

  • Its design is complex, so it has a steep learning curve.

Key Specs:

Pricing: Free for 100 sensors, $1,600 (500-sensor license), $14,500 (unlimited sensors)
Deployment: On-premises and cloud-based resource monitoring
Supported platforms: Microsoft Windows 7-8.1,10, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2-2012 R2, 2016, 2019.
Free Trial: 30-day free Trial

Visit Paessler >>

3) ManageEngine

Best for Customizable monitoring package

ManageEngine is one of the best hardware and health monitoring tools. It communicates with various hardware components, fetching and representing data from different sensors in a format that can be used to interpret their physical state. OpManager enables you to automate remote troubleshooting tasks when a hardware error is detected.

ManageEngine

Features:

  • Full support for ITSM best practices
  • AI-based self-service portal to answer common questions
  • It helps you to Monitor the rate at which your processor completes its processing cycle
  • Monitor multiple disk drives’ status to prevent storage or data transfer issues.
  • Supports Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, Go, Node, and more.
  • Offers Hardware health reports provide an in-depth overview of the condition of your network hardware.
  • Tight integration with other ManageEngine and Zoho products

Pros

  • Full support for ITSM best practices
  • AI-based self-service portal to answer common questions.
  • Provides intuitive dials, graphs, alerts, and reports on the performance of your server and network hardware.
  • Do the root cause analysis that traces problems down to server resources.

Cons

  • Some advanced analytics and AI-driven features are only available at the top pricing tier.
  • Does not offer SaaS package.

Key Specs:

Pricing: Free Basic Version
Deployment: On-premises, SaaS
Supported platforms: Android, Windows Phone
Free Trial: 30-day free Trial

Visit ManageEngine >>

4) Site24x7

Site24x7 provides a holistic and robust SaaS-based monitoring solution for your infrastructure needs. Fulfill all your hardware monitoring requirements through our comprehensive all-in-one monitoring solution. You can also add your own scripts and customize fool-proof solutions through integrations or SNMP according to your needs.

Site24x7

Features:

  • Keep track of network bandwidth, configurations, health, performance, and traffic with a full-stack network monitoring solution.
  • Monitor the performance of your VMware ESX/ESXi hardware sensors like cables, system boards, and BIOS.
  • Get alerted for all hardware-related events and their status, including temperatures, fan speeds, power supply status, individual disk status, and more, for all device types (servers, switches, routers, firewalls, etc.) through custom SNMP monitoring and plugin integration.
  • View metrics related to Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) Integrated Lights Out (iLO) performance.
  • Ensure smooth functioning of the application, video playbacks, and other graphics-intensive workloads through GPU monitoring integration.

Pros

  • Auto-discover over 10,000 devices from 450 vendors and monitor any supported metric using SNMP.
  • Monitor different infrastructure stacks from the cloud, virtualization, containers, networks, and servers from one console.
  • AI-powered IT automation and RCA report generation for every incident to pinpoint issues and administer remediation actions.

Cons

  • Plugin Integrations are supported only when the Linux agents are installed in the tool.

Key Specs:

Pricing: Plans start at $10/mo.
Deployment: Private, public, and hybrid cloud environments
Supported platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOS
Free Trial: 30-day free trial

Visit Site24x7 >>

5) Atera

Best for Automated reports that track and measure your networks

Atera is a complete remote monitoring and management tool suite. It helps businesses to manage IT support. This system monitoring system includes monitoring networks, servers, and applications. It helps you to monitor IT infrastructure metrics, logs, and more in a unified, easy-to-use platform.

Atera

Features:

  • SLA and automated time tracking
  • Notify on-call engineers with machine learning-driven alerts and enable collaboration on issue resolution using integrations like JIRA and Slack
  • You can easily access desktops, servers, applications and save monitoring data.
  • You can have Remote management, automation & scripting, and Remote access using Splashtop.
  • Generates automated reporting and analytics
  • Offers total maintenance capabilities right at the touch of a button.

Pros

  • Monitor system activity in real time and scale up to manage as many customers, devices, or sites as you need.
  • It manages all OS patches for Windows and Mac
  • Real-time alerting reduces the risk factors before a problem occurs.

Cons

  • Does not offer many integration options
  • It helps you to implement better device inventory management.

Key Specs:

Free Trial: 30-day free Trial
Pricing: Plan starting at $79/month
Deployment: Proprietary, Cloud-based
Supported platforms: macOS, Sierra 10.13, Microsoft OS (Windows 7), Microsoft Server >2008.

Link: https://www.atera.com/lp/rvw/remote-it-management-v2/

6) HWMonitor

Best for tracking the entire network

HWMonitor is a network monitoring tool used for hardware and system monitoring. It is one of the best hardware monitoring tools that offers real-time monitoring for your computer’s CPUs, GPUs, drivers, and peripherals. This hardware monitoring software measures your PC system’s voltage, fan speeds, clock speeds, and temperatures.

HWMonitor

Features:

  • CPU and GPU-level hardware Monitoring memory modules with thermal sensors
  • Easy to understand presentation charts
  • It allows you to make accurate monitoring and failure predictions of all system components.
  • You can also define predictive failure as overheating and overloading.
  • SSD / hard disks via S.M.A.R.T.
  • Real-time updates and displays
  • Very detailed, suitable for overclockers and gamers
  • Features customizable alerts and simple reporting

Pros

  • Easy to understand presentation charts
  • You can gather information in various hardware categories, including memory, CPU usage, and motherboard functionality.
  • Efficient and very accurate

Cons

  • No alerts when it detects readings outside the norm
  • Does not offer a Mac version.

Key Specs:

Free Trial: Free Software
Pricing: Free Software
Deployment: Cloud and On-premises
Supported platforms: Windows 10, 8, 7, XP, and Vista.

Link: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

7) HWiNFO

Best for Accurate Monitoring of all system components

HWiNFO is a PC monitoring that offers real-time hardware monitoring for your computer’s CPUs, GPUs, mainboards, drives, and peripherals. You can collect more information with XML, CSV, and HTML reports, complete with customizable graphs and tables. It offers multiple types of reports, Status logging, and Interfacing with other tools or add-ons.

HWiNFO

Features:

  • You can accurately monitor all system components for actual status and failure prediction.
  • Offers a customizable interface with a variety of options.
  • Provides real-time system monitoring
  • It helps identify the BIOS information, like a manufacturer and version number.
  • Offers comprehensive Hardware Analysis, Monitoring, and Reporting for Windows and DOS.
  • It can identify the processor’s manufacturer, its version, current & max clock speed, etc.

Pros

  • In-depth Hardware Information
  • Pulls hardware data in real-time
  • Supports built-in virtualization
  • Allow you to collect information with XML, CSV, and HTML.

Cons

  • Doesn’t support multiple machines
  • Does not have a centralized management dashboard

Key Specs:

Pricing: Free Software
Deployment: SaaS, Windows
Supported platforms: Mac and Windows

Link: https://www.hwinfo.com/

8) Open Hardware Monitor

Best for providing support for multiple hardware chips

Open Hardware Monitor is an open-source program that monitors a computer’s temperature sensors, voltages, fan, and clock speeds. It provides a list of the system performance metrics for these elements.

Open Hardware Monitor

Features:

  • It reads the core temperature sensors of Intel and AMD processors to monitor the CPU temperature.
  • It displays the temperatures of the SMART, hard drive.
  • You can view the monitored values in the main window, system tray, or a customizable desktop gadget.

Pros

  • Open-source community-supported project
  • Quickly displays hardware specs in real-time
  • You can monitor server statuses

Cons

  • Lacks a centralized management dashboard
  • Doesn’t offer any alerting or reporting capabilities

Key Specs:

Free Trial: 30 Days
Pricing: Ask customer care for the price
Deployment: Cloud and on-premises
Supported platforms: Windows and Mac.

Link: https://openhardwaremonitor.org/

9) Checkmk

Best for mapping application dependencies

Checkmk is a hardware monitoring tool that offers a complete view of your IT infrastructure. It also provides the feature for monitoring networks, servers, clouds, containers, and applications. It offers reliable services to customers by maintaining awareness through a completely transparent, easy-to-understand view.

Checkmk

Features:

  • You can monitor business processes by mapping application dependencies into a single overview.
  • It allows you to aggregate various services and hosts into a single state.
  • You can review historical states to determine the root cause of degraded performance.
  • You can check the availability and performance of complex systems at a glance.
  • Monitor multi-vendor equipment through official APIs
  • Rule-based configuration, auto-discovery, and agent deployment
  • Use capacity prediction to see when file systems will pass certain thresholds
  • Set up dynamic alerts for when file systems grow unusually fast
  • Get detailed performance graphs.

Pros

  • Offers fast installation from a single package, available for many platforms.
  • Intelligent alarms with pre-set thresholds that are based on industry expertise.
  • Highly efficient instances which can monitor hundreds of thousands of services.
  • Minimal hardware requirements on the server- and client-side.

Cons

  • The front-end design is a bit outdated and can be improved.

Key Specs:

Free Trial: 30-day free Trial
Deployment: SaaS and On-premise
Supported platforms: Windows

Link: https://checkmk.com/

FAQ:

Here are the Best Hardware Monitoring tools:

Here are important factors that you need to consider while selecting the best hardware Monitoring tool:

  • Make sure that the selected hardware monitoring tool can provide you with a detailed snapshot of your system’s health.
  • It should also be able to provide you with alerts when there are any abnormalities detected.
  • You should ensure that the tool is easy to use and integrates well with your existing infrastructure.
  • It is also important to determine what type of data you need to collect and how often you need to collect it.
  • Finally, you should decide on the budget you are willing to spend.

There are two methods to monitor hardware performance:

  • The first method is to interface directly with the sensors embedded in the equipment. These will have specific reports on processing capacity, operating speed, error events, device temperature, etc.
  • The second is checking activity metrics that can be measured externally, like throughput, flow rates, etc.

Wrap Up:

A hardware Monitoring tool is the only way to safeguard against the failure of a device. Therefore, proactive hardware monitoring solutions like SolarWinds, Paessler, Manage Engine, Atera, and HW Monitor help minimize failing nodes and faltering productivity.

These monitoring tools have dashboards to oversee hardware performance metrics and an alert system to complement real-time monitoring efforts.

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