I have an Asus board. Those utilities, in my experience, are kinda resource hogging. I find this with most of these branded utilities. they tend to include things which someone probably thought would look cool, like graphics and updaters.
With time, the cost in power usage becomes a problem. As as we all know, the most powerful machine will eventually become another underpowered.
My machine, for example, when I bought it was said to be way over the top. Almost everyone I asked and every article I read said having 4 cores was pointless since there isn't any software designed to use it and no plans on the horrizon to create it. That was about 9 years ago now.
To Emphasis Cody's last point, Speedfan is more complicated. CPUID is a monitor and an absolute breeze to set up.
I like the result of Speedfan personally, my fans are quieter and the temp is rock stable now.
But the learning curve was steep.
