How can I get the CPU temperature?

Question

I need to gather some system information for the application I'm developing. The memory available and the CPU load are easy to get using C#. Unfortunately, the CPU temperature it's not that easy. I have tried using WMI, but I couldn't get anything using

Win32_TemperatureProbe

or

MSAcpi_ThermalZoneTemperature

How can I do this? I'm wondering how monitoring programs, as SiSoftware Sandra, can get that information...

Here is the code of the class:

public class SystemInformation
{
    private System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter m_memoryCounter;
    private System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter m_CPUCounter;

    public SystemInformation()
    {
        m_memoryCounter = new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter();
        m_memoryCounter.CategoryName = "Memory";
        m_memoryCounter.CounterName = "Available MBytes";

        m_CPUCounter = new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter();
        m_CPUCounter.CategoryName = "Processor";
        m_CPUCounter.CounterName = "% Processor Time";
        m_CPUCounter.InstanceName = "_Total";
    }

    public float GetAvailableMemory()
    {
        return m_memoryCounter.NextValue();
    }

    public float GetCPULoad()
    {
        return m_CPUCounter.NextValue();
    }

    public float GetCPUTemperature()
    {
        //...
        return 0;
    }
}

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure it's manufacturer dependent, since they will be accessed through an I/O port. If you have a specific board you're trying to work with, try looking through the manuals and/or contacting the manufacturer.

If you want to do this for a lot of different boards, I'd recommend contacting someone at something like SiSoftware or be prepared to read a lot of motherboard manuals.

As another note, not all boards have temperature monitors.

You also might run into problems getting privileged access from the kernel.