Windows has a large ecosystem of useful benchmarking applications, and many of them are free.
Before performing any benchmark, ensure that nothing else is running on your system.
We’ll let you know about how long you’re free to expect each tool to take.
Related:What Is a “Portable” App, and Why Does It Matter?
Prime95 is also aportable app, so you don’t have to install it.
Justdownload the Prime95 ZIP file, extract it, and launch Prime95.exe.
When it asks, opt for “Just Stress Testing” button to skip creating an account.
Prime95 offers to perform a torture test right off the bat.
If you want to perform a torture test, go ahead and choose the “OK” button.
Note that the torture test can take quite a while to run.
If you just want to perform a benchmark instead, poke the “Cancel” button.
Benchmark results are measured in time, where lower values are faster, and therefore better.
Related:CPU Basics: What Are Cores, Hyper-Threading, and Multiple CPUs?
On our test system, it took about 10 minutes.
it’s possible for you to also compare your benchmark results to other computerson the Prime 95 website.
Unlike many all-in-one benchmark suites for Windows, Novabench is completely free.
Its not a trial and theres no paid version with additional features that its trying to sell you.
Novabench works with Windows 7 through 10.
After you download and install Novabench, go ahead and run it.
Novabenchs benchmark process is faster than many other full benchmark suites.
It took about a minute on our test system, while other benchmark suites took significantly longer.
Futuremarks3DMarkis probably the most popular.
The free edition will likely do what most people need.
Do note that even the free edition is a hefty download—weighing in at almost 4 GB.
After downloading and installing, go ahead and run 3DMark.
On the home page, pick the “Run” button to benchmark your PC.
For Windows 10 PCs, the default benchmark is “Time Spy.”
Expect to spend about 10-15 minutes.
PCMark is focused on all-around PC usage performance instead of 3D gaming performance.
The paid version does add additional benchmarks and fancier result graphs.
After downloading and installing the edition you want, go ahead and run PCMark.
We’ll be using PCMark 10 here, but most of the options will be similar in other versions.
On the “Home"page, poke the “Run” button to start the benchmarking.
The benchmark can take a while to complete—nearly 15 minutes on our test system.
When it’s done, you’ll see the results and, as usual, higher scores are better.
The benchmark may take some time to complete.
After it does, youll see detailed information about your benchmark results on the Futuremark website.
As with Futuremarks 3DMark, higher scores are better.
SiSoftware offers paid versions, but the free version contains the benchmarks youll need.
After downloading and installing Sandra, go ahead and run it.
Alternatively, it’s possible for you to run benchmark tests against specific components.
The Overall Score benchmark includes benchmarks of your CPU, GPU, memory bandwidth, and file system performance.
It will eventually show some progress as it cranks through the tests.
Switch over the “Rank” tab to see how your system ranks against other results submitted by users.
