System Manager

A lightweight Windows tray app that shows what your PC is doing and lets you control your displays — in one dark, resizable dashboard.

CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD and motherboard sensors with trend sparklines and colour-coded alerts · the real RTX 50 hotspot (which NVIDIA hides) via MSI Afterburner · energy statistics in kWh and € · fan gauges · multi-monitor on/off, refresh rate, HDR, RTSS FPS cap, audio output switching. Built with PyQt6 and LibreHardwareMonitor. UI in English, Deutsch, Español, Français.

Status: actively developed hobby project, tested on one machine (Ryzen 7 9800X3D · RTX 5080 · ASUS B850). Other hardware will mostly work (LibreHardwareMonitor does the heavy lifting), but expect rough edges.

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Features

Overview

• Four hero tiles — CPU · GPU · System · Controller — with big colour-coded values, usage · watts, a 60-second sparkline each, and the GPU hotspot highlighted in magenta.
• Values turn amber / red past configurable thresholds; a health dot in the header and the tray icon change colour; an optional Windows notification fires once when something goes critical.
• Cooling tiles for every board fan (PWM %), Displays summary, and a lock/unlock button to resize the sections with drag dividers (layout is saved).

System tab — collapsible cards with detailed readouts

• CPU: package temp, power, voltage, per-core clock & load.
• GPU: core, hotspot, memory junction, clocks, power, fan, VRAM, PCIe load.
• RAM, Motherboard (chipset/VRM temps, voltages, BIOS info).
• SSD · Storage: per drive temperature, used space, health and total data written (NVMe & SATA).
• PWR · Power Consumption (CPU + GPU): now / average / peak (with time) / spikes, kWh and cost for today, this month and this year, peak CPU & GPU, yesterday — with your own electricity price.

Fans tab — animated ring gauges (RPM + PWM %) for every fan, rename by double-click. Read-only by design: System Manager never writes fan speeds, so it runs happily next to FanControl, Armoury Crate & co.

Monitors tab — see every attached display, make one primary, enable/disable individual monitors, pick refresh rates.

Bottom bar & Misc menu — Turn Off All displays · Screensaver · HDR toggle · extend/duplicate/PC-only/second-only · refresh rate · RTSS FPS cap · sound output device · Snipping Tool · display settings · GPU hotspot setup · design themes (8 presets + custom colours) · alert toggles & thresholds · electricity price · Language · start with Windows · debug info · check for updates (self-updating).

The RTX 50 hotspot

NVIDIA removed the hotspot sensor from its public API on Blackwell cards. System Manager reads it anyway — safely — by reading MSI Afterburner's shared memory, where the community BlackwellHotspot plugin publishes the real die temperature. System Manager itself never touches the GPU registers.

Misc → GPU Hotspot (Afterburner)… walks you through it in three steps (plugin install with one click, the one-time RTCore unlock with ready-to-paste lines for your detected GPU, enabling the readout). Note that the unlock edits two MSI Afterburner config files; the dialog tells you exactly which lines, and you make the edits yourself.

Requirements

• Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit.
• Administrator rights — sensor reading uses LibreHardwareMonitor's kernel driver (WinRing0). The app requests elevation on start.
• .NET Framework 4.7.2+ (already on every modern Windows) for the bundled sensor helper.
• Optional: MSI Afterburner (for the RTX 50 hotspot) and RivaTuner Statistics Server (for the FPS cap).

Install

1. Download SystemManager.zip from the latest build (every push to main publishes a fresh one).
2. Extract the folder anywhere (e.g. C:\Tools\SystemManager) and run SystemManager.exe. It lives in the tray; double-click the icon to open the window.
3. Later updates: Misc → Check for Updates downloads and swaps the build in place.

Antivirus note: the build is not code-signed and ships a kernel driver (WinRing0 via LibreHardwareMonitor), so Bitdefender and friends may quarantine TempReader.exe. If sensors show "—", add the extracted folder to your AV exclusions — that is also why the app is distributed as a folder rather than a single exe.

Good to know

• Power figures are CPU + GPU only. Board, RAM, fans and PSU losses are not measured — real wall power is roughly 60–100 W higher.
• Energy history is stored in %APPDATA%\SystemManager\energy.json (~400 days); settings, theme and fan names live next to it.
• Thresholds default to CPU 80/90 °C, GPU 80/88 °C, hotspot 90/100 °C (warning/critical) and can be changed under Misc.
• Switching the language restarts the app so every label is rebuilt.

Build from source

The GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/build.yml is the reference build. Locally on Windows:

pip install pyinstaller PyQt6 Pillow
cd tempreader  && dotnet publish -c Release --framework net472 -o ../tempreader_out  && cd ..
cd audioswitch && dotnet publish -c Release --framework net472 -o ../audioswitch_out && cd ..
python create_icon.py
pyinstaller --onedir --noupx --windowed --name SystemManager --uac-admin --icon icon.ico ^
  --version-file version_info.txt --collect-all PyQt6 ^
  --add-data "tempreader_out;tempreader" --add-data "audioswitch_out;audioswitch" ^
  --add-data "plugin;plugin" system_manager.py

Running from source for development: python system_manager.py (sensors still need the compiled TempReader.exe next to the script in tempreader/).

Project layout

system_manager.py   PyQt6 app: UI, polling, alerts, energy stats, updater, i18n
tempreader/         C# helper (LibreHardwareMonitorLib 0.9.5-pre453) → sensor JSON + Afterburner shared memory
audioswitch/        C# helper to switch the default audio device (IPolicyConfig)
plugin/             BlackwellHotspot Afterburner plugin (Hotspot.dll + its README) bundled for one-click install
create_icon.py      Generates the app icon at build time
.github/workflows/  CI: builds both helpers + the PyInstaller bundle, publishes SystemManager.zip

Credits

• LibreHardwareMonitor — sensor access (CPU, GPU, motherboard, storage, fans).
• The community BlackwellHotspot Afterburner plugin — RTX 50 hotspot and per-module GDDR7 temperatures. Bundled as provided, with its original README; all credit to its author.
• MSI Afterburner / RivaTuner Statistics Server by Unwinder — shared-memory sensors and the FPS limiter this app talks to.

Disclaimer

This software reads hardware through a kernel driver and, for the hotspot feature, guides you through editing another application's configuration. It is provided as-is, without warranty. Use at your own risk.