20 Programs to Analyze and Benchmark Your Hardware

1

CPU-Z

With monitoring covered, what about a specifications summary? Enter stage left: I-Nex. Developed by a small group of programmers in Poland, this Linux-only tool works a bit like CPU-Z does, but also provides additional details about the hard drives, audio system, and operating system structure.

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2

HWiNFO

If HWinfo shows far too much detail for you, then there's always Speccy. This little program is made by the developers of CCleaner and it's essentially a system summary. There is some sensor logging built in, as you can see in the image below: the little green bar graphs actively plot temperature values or amount of RAM, storage, etc used.

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3

Speccy

Unlike the prior 3 entries in our list of programs, this one doesn't seem to be updated as often. For example, it's detecting the Intel Core i7-9700K in the PC used to grab these screenshots as an i7-7700K. Speccy is available for Windows-based computers and is free to use, but if you want the additional features of automatic updates and premium support, it's currently a $19.95 annual subscription.

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4

AIDA64

Next in our list is AIDA64. The program is made by Hungarian software developers FinalWire, and it's been in circulation (in several forms) since 2010. The standard version, AIDA64 Extreme, is very much like HWinfo, but it's not free. The software comes as a 30-day trial, with various outputs restricted, as shown below.

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5

HWMonitor

HWmonitor is for Windows PCs only, but it's free, and as a tool for keeping an eye on temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages, it fits the role perfectly. There is a program called HWMonitor for Mac, and the name suggests that it's a platform port of this tool -- unfortunately it's not.

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6

Open Hardware Monitor

If you're after a monitoring program for a Linux computer, your options are unfortunately rather limited. However, for 10 years, software developer Michael Möller has been running an open source project to help fill this niche -- meet Open Hardware Monitor.

#Device Management #Monitoring Tools #System Information 154 social mentions

7

I-Nex

With monitoring covered, what about a specifications summary? Enter stage left: I-Nex. Developed by a small group of programmers in Poland, this Linux-only tool works a bit like CPU-Z does, but also provides additional details about the hard drives, audio system, and operating system structure.

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8

SiSoftware Sandra

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9

PCMark

PCMark monitors various things during the test, such as CPU load and temperature, and the results can be uploaded to UL's database, for comparison with other systems. There is a separate version of PCMark for Android devices.

#Device Management #System Information #Utilities 3 social mentions

10

3DMark

The visuals are nice to watch (some parts of it are pushing 6 million triangles per frame, with 30 active light sources), while the test is running, and like 3DMark, you can set it to render the graphics at a resolution higher than the output monitor's -- it uses a very quick shader routine to scale back down, to fit onto the screen. So if you want to give your GPU a decent workout, then this is a quick way of doing it.

#Device Management #System Information #Utilities 1 social mentions

11

Cinebench

The compression test is good at seeing how capable the cache of the CPU and the system memory are, in terms of bandwidth and latency; the decompression results are more affected by the CPU's internal structure and how well it manages random, branching integer operations. So if you're looking to compare these aspects across different makes and models of processors, 7-zip is handy to use and like Cinebench, it's results are often shown in CPU reviews.

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The compression test is good at seeing how capable the cache of the CPU and the system memory are, in terms of bandwidth and latency; the decompression results are more affected by the CPU's internal structure and how well it manages random, branching integer operations. So if you're looking to compare these aspects across different makes and models of processors, 7-zip is handy to use and like Cinebench, it's results are often shown in CPU reviews.

13

ocbase.com Occt

There's not a huge range of tests in the app, but they do exactly what they're supposed to: load up the CPU, GPU, or RAM and give them a good workout. OCCT is free for general use, although it does ask you for a $1 to get rid of the reminder window, every time you run a test. However, that buck will only last for a month: the makers of the program charge $10 for a year, or $15 for eternity, to do the same thing.

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14

Geekbench

Another popular benchmarking tool is Geekbench, by Primate Labs. This is has also been around for a long time, but in the past, it's also had its fair share of negative criticism, notably by key industry figure Linus Torvalds. That said, it was one of the very few testing programs that's available for all 5 major platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, and iOS.

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15

Novabench

If you're after another multi-platform tester, then you should consider giving Novabench a look. Available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, this benchmark tool offers CPU, GPU, RAM, and hard drive tests.

#Device Management #System Information #Utilities 1 social mentions

16

Phoronix Test Suite

What if you want to benchmark your computer (Windows, Linux, or macOS-based), but you don't want to pay out for the full set of features? Or let's say you're a IT professional and you need to remotely test and monitor hardware, what then? Well, it's simple: open-sourced Phoronix Test Suite is what you need.

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The compression test is good at seeing how capable the cache of the CPU and the system memory are, in terms of bandwidth and latency; the decompression results are more affected by the CPU's internal structure and how well it manages random, branching integer operations. So if you're looking to compare these aspects across different makes and models of processors, 7-zip is handy to use and like Cinebench, it's results are often shown in CPU reviews.

18

UNIGINE Benchmarks

Where Unigine benchmarks focuses on 3D graphics, this one is all about your storage -- specifically, how quickly it can read and write data to them, in various ways. CrystalDiskMark is very basic, but there's nothing wrong with that.

#Device Management #System Information #Utilities 25 social mentions

19

CrystalMark

Where Unigine benchmarks focuses on 3D graphics, this one is all about your storage -- specifically, how quickly it can read and write data to them, in various ways. CrystalDiskMark is very basic, but there's nothing wrong with that.

#Hard Drive Tools #Utilities #Monitoring Tools 73 social mentions

20

PerformanceTest

No list article should be without at least one controversial choice, and this one is no different! We've picked PerformanceTEST by PassMark, not because it does anything badly, but some people don't like it because of the way it calculates the score in the CPU tests. Fans on either side of the AMD vs. Intel battle will sometimes claim that their favorite model is being unfairly represented, but that's just the nature of benchmarking. It's always best to use more than one program to get a good overview of your system's capabilities.

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