The more you use your PC the slower it will become over time. Broken or corrupted drivers, damaged registry entries and outdated programs will all accumulate on your system and need to be cleaned out or fixed regularly.
This is an issue that will affect every PC to some extent or another and sometimes the best thing to do is start fresh by formatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows completely. However, for general maintenance, making use of software to keep your PC in good condition is an easy way to ensure its performance is maintained.
There is a wide range of these tools available and we’re going to recommend our favourites to you right now, so read on.
Best PC diagnostic tools
These tools, as the name suggests, are aimed to be particularly effective at information gathering and finding out if anything is wrong with your system. If you’re looking for software that will help you fix a wide range of common performance-killing issues, we have some recommendations for that too.
Core Temp
This program allows you to monitor the temperature of your CPU (Central Processing Unit), the brain of your computer. If you’re worried that it is running too hot, wish to see how much power its drawing or simply want general information about the component this is a fantastic free tool.
You can download Core Temp on its website here.
DriverMax
DriverMax makes keeping your drivers up to date a much easier process. This software will scan your PC and recommend new drivers for your system, ensuring each component is running the very latest software, and so running in the most secure and efficient way possible.
The free version of the software allows you to check your system’s drivers manually while paying a small fee for the premium version will allow the software to automatically update to new drivers when they become available.
You can download DriverMax here.
System Information for Windows
This software analyzes your computer and displays the most crucial data including information on hardware, installed software and your windows installation.
This program will provide information about your motherboard, CPU, hard disk, graphics card and drivers. You can also use this to find the version number of installed software along with the product code for the software too.
This is paid for software, but it does also offer a free trial on its website.
Battery Info View
This software allows you to see the current status of your laptop or netbook battery. This information includes the battery name, serial number, manufacture date, power state, current capacity, full charged capacity, voltage, charge/discharge rate and much more.
Battery Info View also provides logs which will take a snapshot of battery performance every 30 seconds, allowing you to see your battery’s performance over a longer period of time.
You can download Battery Info View from its website here.
GPU-Z
GPU-Z is a graphics card utility tool that allows you to see a host of information about your active GPU.
You can get a whole range of information from this software, from the memory type, speed and bandwidth to the driver version and even what voltage the card is drawing from your power supply.
This software gives you a good amount of relevant, cleanly displayed information that is perfect if you need a closer look at what exactly your GPU is doing.
You can download GPU-Z from its website here.
The original version of this article was produced by our German colleagues over on PCWelt.de.