Prism HUD

As we are sure you already know, you can easily keep track of the overall resource usage from your system with the help of Windows' native app named Task Manager.

While it may be accurate and easy to access, it is not what you would call unobtrusive, therefore constantly keeping it on your desktop to monitor your system's usage is not quite ideal.

Prism HUD is a lightweight and inconspicuous piece of software designed to provide you with a quick and simple reading of your system's current performance and resource consumption.

Subsequent to its installation, Prism HUD is integrated into your computer's system tray, from where it can be easily summoned via a simple mouse click.

The application places on your desktop a set of minimalist and semi-transparent panels that include a collection of prisms.

Within the prisms, you can view basic information like the partition free space, the current CPU usage, the total memory used and the processes that use it most. The tool displays the number of hard disk faults per second and the network data transfer speed in KBytes per second.

If at first, you might find the three panels and Prism HUG unappealing and maybe a bit old-school looking, there is something you should know. From the app's Preferences window, you can easily change the panels' positions, their sizes, opacity levels, the gap limit and the duration until they fade away.

You can also create any number of new panels and customize their looks, layout and functionality, so that they perfectly suit your needs. The prisms can be moved from one panel to the other and individually customized. You can enable or disable them, change their color, set triggers of specified restrictions and define the maximum values.

The app is far from being stylish and, yes, there are more modern and better alternatives out there. But despite all this, there is no denying that this little utility can prove quite useful and is still relevant, even for users that are running the latest versions of Windows.

Not only is it lightweight and unobtrusive, but its strong-point is definitely its plethora of available customization options.