Don't want your Window Manager to run around asking how the hardware is doing? Have Conky do it!
conky-awesome talks to Conky over DBus.

• awesome with dbus support
• conky with X support
• lua bindings to dbus

Clone this repo to ~/.config/awesome/conky

in rc.lua:

local conky = require("conky")

Conky's own window defaults to being behind all others.

Bind F12 to put the on top while the key is held.
Bind modkey + F12 to toggle whether conky is on top or below all other windows.

globalkeys = awful.util.table.join(
    awful.key( .....
    .....
    conky.show_key("F12"),
    conky.toggle_key("F12"), { modkey })
)

both functions have this signature: _key(keystring, [ modifier table ])

conky.rule({ ontop = false, below = true })

You declare a conky widget like:

{
  icon    = <string>,     -- image filename
  label   = <string>,     -- a static textbox
  conky   = <string>,     -- what gets passed to conky_parse()
  updater = <function>,   -- updater function, details below
  {                          -- list of any number of:
    <conky declaration>,     -- nested conky widgets
    <canned conky widget>,   -- premade widgets from .config/awesome/conky/widgets
    <any wibox>,             -- if you want other widgets inbetween conky widgets
  }
}

Minimal example, just declaring a string to be evaluated by conky:

s.mywibox:setup {
  .....
  conky.widget({ conky = "CPU: ${cpu 0}% MEM: ${memperc}% GPU: ${hwmon 0 temp 1}" }),
  ....
}

The layout order is | ICON | LABEL | CONKY |

conky.widget({
    icon = "my_neat_cpu_icon.png",
    label = "CPU:",
    conky = "${cpu%}"
})

The updater function has the following signature:
updater(conky_update, conky_wibox, icon_wibox, label_wibox)

conky_update is the string from conky, use that to make changes
icon_wibox is a wibox.widget.imagebox instance
conky_wibox and label_wibox are instances of wibox.widget.textbox

Take a look at widgets/battery.lua for an example

You can look at what gets sent dbus with the monitor script

Conky is launched by the conky-awesome-launch script, and run conky-awesome-launch restart [conky options] to restart conky