The Hardware Monitor

The Hardware Monitor page (sidebar: Hardware Monitor) is a deeper, sensor-level view than the Home dashboard. It reads CPU, GPU, RAM, disk and network in real time, adds frametime/percentile stats while you game, and — where your GPU supports it — lets you nudge fan speed and power limit. It does all of this without a kernel driver, which is the deliberate trade-off that keeps it anti-cheat-safe.

What it reads, and how

• CPU — usage %, an estimated current clock (base clock scaled by the processor-performance counter), thread count, and temperature if a safe WMI thermal source exposes it. CPU temp often shows temp N/A — that's honest: reading it reliably needs a kernel driver this app refuses to ship.
• GPU — on NVIDIA cards, usage, temperature, core/memory clocks, VRAM used/total, power draw and fan speed come straight from NVIDIA's own nvml.dll (it ships with the driver). On AMD/Intel, usage comes from the Windows GPU counter and temp/fan/clock from the vendor's user-mode library where available.
• RAM — used/total in GB and a percentage, from the live memory status.
• Disk — overall physical-disk activity %.
• Network — combined download/upload throughput across your real adapters (loopback and tunnels excluded).

Everything updates once per second, and the read happens on a background thread so the UI stays smooth.

Frametime and 1% / 0.1% lows

While a game or emulator is running and Guardian has detected it, the monitor shows live frame statistics:

• FPS — current frame rate.
• Frametime — average milliseconds per frame.
• 1% low and 0.1% low — the frame rate during your worst 1% and 0.1% of frames, i.e. how bad the stutters get. These matter more for feel than the headline FPS.
• A live frametime graph — flatter is smoother.

These come from high-frequency sampling of the same anti-cheat-safe present counter the FPS gauge uses — no ETW, no injection. When no game is detected, every field reads a dash and the label says no game detected. The same fullscreen-vs-borderless caveat from the FPS article applies here.

GPU fan and power tuning

If your GPU and driver expose safe, documented controls, a tuning panel appears:

1. Fan % — drag the slider and click Apply to set a fixed fan speed, or Auto to hand control back to the driver's curve.
2. Power limit % — drag to lower (cooler, quieter) or raise (more performance, more heat), confirm the prompt, then it's applied.

If your hardware doesn't support in-app tuning, the panel is replaced by a button that opens the official vendor tool (NVIDIA app, AMD software, or Intel Arc Control) — BRUTAL won't perform blind, undocumented GPU writes.

How it differs from the Home dashboard

• The Home dashboard is the at-a-glance summary plus the Performance Score and quick actions.
• The Hardware Monitor is the detailed instrument panel: per-sensor temperatures, clocks, VRAM, power, frametime percentiles and tuning.

Use the dashboard to decide whether to act; use the Hardware Monitor to see exactly what your hardware is doing.

Best practice

• Watch 1% lows, not just average FPS — that's where stutter lives.
• Keep an eye on GPU temperature during long sessions; if it climbs, a small power-limit reduction can cut heat with little FPS loss.
• If a sensor shows N/A, that's the app being honest about what your hardware safely exposes — not a bug.

Common issues / troubleshooting

• CPU temp is N/A. Expected on many boards — a safe WMI temperature source isn't present, and the app won't load a kernel driver to force it.
• GPU temp/clock/power missing on NVIDIA. Update your GPU driver so nvml.dll is current, then revisit the page.
• No tuning panel. Your GPU/driver doesn't expose documented controls; use the vendor-tool button instead.
• Frame stats stuck on dashes. No game detected yet — launch the game and let Guardian pick it up.