What do normal, warm and hot temperature bands mean?

Each temperature tile in Pulse by Zaweba is coloured to show which of three bands its reading falls in: normal, warm or hot. Two thresholds divide them, the warm threshold and the hot threshold, and both are printed on the tile. Where the hardware reports its own limits Pulse uses those, so the bands fit your particular chips rather than a rule of thumb.

The point is to save you from having to know what every number means. A reading of 70 degrees could be comfortable or close to the limit, depending on the part. The band tells you which.

The three bands

Normal is below the warm threshold. This is where a sensor should sit when the PC is idle or doing light work.

Warm is between the two thresholds. It is not a fault. Processors and graphics cards are expected to reach it under heavy loads such as games, exports or long calculations. Warm at an idle desktop, on the other hand, is worth investigating.

Hot is above the hot threshold. The part is near the top of its comfortable range. A brief visit during a heavy moment can happen; staying there points at poor cooling, dust or a program working the hardware too hard.

Where the thresholds come from

Pulse reads the hardware's own limits when it can. For a CPU it uses the TjMax, the maximum temperature the processor is designed to run at. For an NVMe drive it uses the drive's own warning temperature. These come from the maker and suit that exact part.

When no limit is readable, Pulse uses defaults: GPU core 75 and 85 degrees C, GPU hot spot 85 and 95, motherboard 70 and 85, and drives 55 and 65. The tile always shows which thresholds are in use, along with the source of the reading.

Where you'll see them

The Temperatures page (Ctrl+2) has tiles for the CPU package and cores, the GPU core, hot spot and memory, the motherboard or ACPI thermal zone, and each drive. GPU and NVMe temperatures work as a normal user. CPU and motherboard readings need the optional sensor helper, turned on in Settings > Sensor readings, plus the free PawnIO driver.

How the bands connect to alerts

The temperature alert on the Alerts page uses the same idea. It is on by default and fires when a sensor stays past its threshold for five seconds. Leave its value at 0 and it uses the sensor's own hot band; type a fixed number of degrees C if you'd like your own limit instead. The five-second rule means a single spike won't set it off.

Making the bands useful

Glance at the tiles at a quiet moment to learn what normal looks like on your PC, then again during your heaviest work. If the colours move from normal to warm under load and back again afterwards, the cooling is coping. If they reach hot regularly, check the vents and fans. Pulse by Zaweba's History page lists the temperature peaks with the busiest apps in that minute, which tells you what drove each one.