Sensor history

Sensor History charts logged sensor data over time. The live sensor grid tells you what the machine is doing this second. This section covers everything since you installed Novabench.

It requires Novabench Plus and the background service. For what gets logged, how often, and how to turn logging on, see sensor monitoring.

Choosing what to chart

Two controls in the Display sidebar drive the chart.

Device selects what to chart: CPU, GPU, or Memory. CPU and GPU chart temperature, power, and load together, so you can see the relationship between them. Memory charts a single usage series.

Date Range selects the window: Past Day, Past Week, Past Month, Past Year, or All. Novabench aggregates longer ranges more coarsely. A thermal spike that stands out on Past Day can disappear into the average on Past Year.

Reading the charts

Plotting temperature, power, and load on the same axis is what makes this section useful. The interesting cases are the ones where those three series disagree.

• Load high, power high, temperature climbing then flat: normal behavior under sustained work, with the cooling system keeping up.
• Load high, temperature at a ceiling, power dropping: thermal throttling. The machine pulls back to stay within its thermal limit, and benchmark scores taken during this period are low.
• Temperature climbing at the same load it used to handle: cooling degraded. Dust, a failing fan, or dried thermal paste. This is the pattern that only a long-range chart reveals, since day to day it looks like nothing changed.
• Power capped well below the part's rating with temperature moderate: a power or firmware limit rather than a cooling problem.

Connecting history to results

Sensor history is most valuable next to test result trends. When a benchmark score drops, the question is always whether the machine got slower or the conditions changed. Pull up the same date range in both sections:

• Scores down, temperatures up at equal load: a thermal problem.
• Scores down, temperatures and power unchanged: look at software instead. Check drivers for a recent update, and the system inventory for a microcode revision or a mitigation state change.

Benchmark and stress test results also carry their own sensor charts that cover only that run. Those are the right tool for a single test. This section is for the months around it.

Statistics

Each chart carries a summary underneath: minimum, maximum, average, and 90th percentile for the visible range.

Use the 90th percentile for thermal judgments. The maximum captures a single brief spike that may not represent sustained behavior. The 90th percentile describes the temperature the machine typically reaches under load. That determines whether it throttles and how the components age.

When the chart is empty

An empty chart means no snapshots exist in that range. Sensor logging records a snapshot every two minutes while the service runs. A machine that was off, or that only just had logging enabled, has nothing to show yet. Novabench cannot backfill history.

Logging is unavailable in portable mode, which has no background service.