Computers today are very powerful indeed, yet we still see computers that slow down and go into pain after opening numerous programs or after starting a particularly heavy game. You can then decide to buy a new computer, or to just change the RAM, the video card, the disk or the internet connection provider to improve the situation.To do a PC test e understand exactly where improvement is neededwhich piece is weaker or if, after making a hardware modification, the situation will improve significantly, we can use PC, CPU, GPU, Disk, Network and Memory benchmark programs.
With the benchmark, in addition to testing each hardware component, you can too get a comparison with other PCs and therefore understand if you have a good computer or if you can improve it because it is old or because there is some bottleneck inside that throttles performance.
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1) Windows performance test
The first PC test provides it directly to Windows and provides basic information on the actual capabilities of the computer in use. On Windows 11 and Windows 10 we can invoke the Windows System Assessment Tool directly from the terminal by opening the Start menu, searching Windows PowerShell and typing the following command:
winsat formal
To immediately view a general evaluation of Windows performance, type the following command, again from Windows PowerShell:
Get-CimInstance Win32_WinSat
Let’s check the various items generated in the window: if we find a component with a score lower than 8, it is advisable to intervene on it to increase the performance of the computer. To learn more, we can also read our guide on how read the Windows performance index and how to improve it.
2) CPU-Z
The simplest program we can use to benchmark the PC is CPU-Zalso famous as a program to correctly identify the processor in use.
Starting this portable program we can carry out a test on the processor by pressing on the card Benchchoose a very powerful CPU already tested by the program at the voice Reference (drop-down menu at the bottom) and first press on Bench CPU and, at the end of the test, on Stress CPU. At the end of the tests we will be able to view the performance of the processor in use and evaluate whether to replace it or not.
3) SiSoft Sandra Lite
SiSoft Sandra Lite is a free, non-commercial suite of benchmarking programs perfect for accurately testing the performance of one or more computers.
CPU, disk, video card and network benchmarks can be performed. In practice you can do the test of the whole PC even if for discs and video cards you can do better with specialized software. In Sandra, however, there is also the function of comparing the PC with that of others, in order to have a judgment based on what the market offers and that other Sandra users have.
4) 3D Mark
3DMark is the best benchmark program available on Windows. With it we can carry out a very deep and demanding testing that tests the performance of the video card and its ability to withstand high demands (such as modern games available in FullHD or 4K).
3DMark can be used for free in a limited version, which however is sufficient for comparison (especially if we are doing tests for games). The 3DMark score is automatically uploaded online to the site and ranked against the others.
5) FRAPS
FRAPS is a very useful program when running games, designed to show the FPS (ie the frames per second generated by the graphics card).
FRAPS stays running while playing video games, and with it, we can find out how powerful our PC is at running a given game. By making more measurements you can see how the performance changes depending on the graphics parameters or after changing the video card.
The negative aspect of FRAPS is the lack of a comparison tool, but since it is FPS it is easy to imagine that, if we manage to keep the 50 FPS even with the graphics settings at maximum (with 1920×1080 resolution), we are in front of a computer particularly powerful.
6) Novabench
NovaBench is a real program of PC benchmark with tests for CPU, GPU (video card), RAM and disk speed.
Unlike many benchmark suites, NovaBench is completely free with no paid versions (although sadly it hasn’t been updated since 2011). After a quick analysis, a score is assigned which can be compared with that of other computers on the Novabench website.
7) UserBenchmark
UserBenchmark is another very complete and effective program for testing the performance of the components installed on a computer. This program does not require installation and after the analysis it shows the scores and the comparison with the average of the benchmarks made by other people, so you can check how powerful the PC we are using at that precise moment.
The program provides benchmark tests for CPU, GPU, SSD, hard drives, RAM and USB peripherals, so you can test every upgradeable component.
8) CrystalDiskMark
If we suspect that the disk or SSD is responsible for the slowness of the PC we can use the CrystalDiskMark program as a benchmark. It is one of the best applications for checking disk performance and instantly knowing how fast the disk is in use.
To perform the test we start the portable version of the app and press the button All; once completed, we analyze the numbers and graphs to see how high the transfer speed is (above 500 MB / s we have the best SSDs, the new NVMe M.2 disks they also reach over 1000 MB / s while for mechanical hard disks we hardly get more than 100 MB / s).
To learn more, we can read our guide to the best hard drive test programs, health, performance and speed.
9) Unigine Heaven
Unigine Heaven is an excellent benchmark program for graphics cards useful for measuring current power, comparing different models and even temperature measurements, before, during and after overclocking.
A real point of reference for all those who play and want to try the new gaming PC just assembled.
10) LAN and Wi-Fi speed test
The speed of your internet connection is also important, especially if we often play online games or watch a lot of streaming videos. It goes without saying that if your network connection is poor, either because of the router or the fault of the provider, you can also have the best PC right now, but in the end internet sites and Youtube will be slow to load anyway.
We remind you that the best connection speed can be reached via Ethernet cable; alternatively we only ever use 5 GHz connections when we connect to the modem’s Wi-Fi.
For effective connection tests, we recommend that you read our guides on Internet speed test for Windows 10 and 11 (upload and download) come on how to check internet speed right away.
Conclusions
Testing your computer is all in all very simple, given the presence on the market of free programs within everyone’s reach. If we fear that our computer is too slow to work, to study or to play, we run the tests seen above one after the other, so that we can obtain good benchmark results to be compared with other computers.
To learn more we can read our guides to sites to compare processors, video cards and SSDs and how Measure computer power and hardware performance.