System Resource Monitor

A Windows desktop dashboard for live CPU, memory, disk, and process metrics, built in WPF on .NET 9 using MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) and Dependency Injection.

Features

• Overall and per-core CPU utilization for every logical processor
• Used / available / total physical memory with derived percentage
• Disk read and write throughput in MB/s
• 60-second rolling history chart for CPU and memory
• Sortable process list with per-PID CPU% and memory usage
• 1 Hz sampling that never blocks the UI thread

Architecture

The app is a single window composed of feature views that each bind to their own ViewModel.
A ShellViewModel aggregates the feature ViewModels (Process List, CPU %, Memory %, etc), owns the sampling loop, and is the only DataContext MainWindow ever sees.

Each one-second tick crosses a thread boundary: sampling runs on the thread pool, results are applied to the bound ViewModels on the UI thread, and XAML data binding takes care of the redraw.

flowchart LR
    subgraph pool [Thread Pool]
        services[Services<br/>PerfCounter/WMI/Process]
    end

    subgraph ui [UI Thread]
        shell[ShellViewModel]
        vms[Feature ViewModels]
        views[Views]
    end

    shell -->|"Task.Run Sample()"| services
    services -->|"sampling data"| shell
    shell -->|"ApplySample/ApplySnapshot"| vms
    vms -->|"PropertyChanged"| views

Loading

• MVVM is provided by CommunityToolkit.Mvvm: ViewModels are partial classes whose observable properties are generated from [ObservableProperty] fields. No INotifyPropertyChanged boilerplate, no code-behind logic in any view.
• Dependency injection is wired up in App.OnStartup: services and ViewModels are registered as singletons against Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection, and MainWindow.DataContext is resolved from the container.
• Async sampling is driven by a single PeriodicTimer in ShellViewModel. Each tick pushes the counter reads onto the thread pool via Task.Run, then applies the resulting samples to the bound ViewModels on the UI thread.

Project structure

System Resource Monitor/
├── Models/                             Plain data records returned by services
│   ├── CpuSample.cs
│   ├── DiskSample.cs
│   ├── MemorySample.cs
│   └── ProcessInfo.cs
├── Services/                           System-data retrieval, each behind an interface:
│   ├── CpuService.cs                       PerformanceCounter: % Processor Time
│   ├── MemoryService.cs                    PerformanceCounter + WMI
│   ├── DiskService.cs                      PerformanceCounter: PhysicalDisk Bytes/sec
│   └── ProcessService.cs                   Process.GetProcesses + TotalProcessorTime deltas
├── ViewModels/                         ShellViewModel plus one ViewModel per feature
│   ├── ShellViewModel.cs
│   ├── CpuViewModel.cs
│   ├── MemoryViewModel.cs
│   ├── DiskViewModel.cs
│   ├── HistoryChartViewModel.cs
│   └── ProcessListViewModel.cs
├── Views/                              UserControls; each .xaml.cs only calls InitializeComponent()
│   ├── CpuView.xaml
│   ├── MemoryView.xaml
│   ├── DiskView.xaml
│   ├── HistoryChartView.xaml
│   └── ProcessListView.xaml
├── Themes/                             Palette, typography, and ControlTemplates for the dark theme
│   └── DarkTheme.xaml
├── App.xaml(.cs)                       DI bootstrap; manual MainWindow creation in OnStartup
└── MainWindow.xaml(.cs)                Window shell hosting the header strip, body, and footer

Requirements

• Windows 10 1903 or newer (for Cascadia Mono; Consolas is the fallback font so older versions still work)
• .NET 9 SDK

Build and run

dotnet build
dotnet run --project "System Resource Monitor.csproj"

Or open System Resource Monitor.csproj in Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider and run.

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
CommunityToolkit.Mvvm	ObservableObject, [ObservableProperty] / [NotifyPropertyChangedFor] source generators
Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection	Service / ViewModel container bootstrapped in App.OnStartup
LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.WPF	History chart, rendered with SkiaSharp
System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter	Live CPU, memory, and disk counters
System.Management	WMI query for total physical memory