Active CPU

It’s a well-known fact that everything running on your computer uses resources, some more than others. It’s recommended to know, or at least be aware of usage, just to prevent running into any performance spikes, or even issues. As such, Active CPU comes as a straightforward tool to monitor and display CPU usage.

Starts to monitor CPU from the start

Setup doesn’t really take a lot of time, with the last step asking whether or not you want to add the program to the list of startup items, create a desktop shortcut, and launch it right away. As far as the design is concerned, it’s somewhat similar to the resource monitor found in the Task Manager, thus eliminating any accommodation issues.
The window is pretty compact by default, but you can stretch the window borders in order to get a more detailed view of consumption percentage, as well as the graph history. It starts to monitor your CPU consumption as soon as it’s launched, but it might be recommended to run it with administrator privileges so that it properly reads details.

Easily set refresh rate

A few options are at your disposal, accessed from a dedicated toolbar menu. It’s possible to instantly trigger a refresh operation, or leave it to automatic. It comes with several speed levels for the refresh interval, such as low, normal, and high, as well as pause in case you want to manually refresh.
There’s an option to make the window sit on top of everything else, but you don’t necessarily need to leave it on the desktop, because it can be minimized to the tray area, with a dedicated graph icon. Sadly, the application shows overall usage, with no support for individual cores, or options to save logs or reports.

On an ending note

In conclusion, Active CPU does manage to offer what’s expected, but it does this in a pretty straightforward manner. It doesn’t show individual core operations, while the lack of an option to generate reports is a little disappointing.