How to check PC parts

There could be numerous reasons for a PC to underperform. Our guidelines about how to check PC parts will help you through the process of identifying the cause of sluggish system behavior. After going through our descriptive guide, users can pinpoint the hardware issue for troubleshooting. Sometimes you might be curious to see the hardware connected to your PC. An outdated driver can also cause slowing down. You saw a guy playing CyberPunk 2077 with a similar graphics card with better framerates than you on YouTube. It might intrigue you into diagnosing the cause of your hardware bottleneck compared to his system configuration. The first step is to find the correct PC specification to start troubleshooting.

Windows comes with pre-installed software that will work on any computer. They are designed to help users manage their hardware. Some software automatically highlights the conflicting hardware, while others are used for performance monitoring. We will discuss tips and tricks to improve your computer’s overall health by smartly using the described tools. A driver is a crucial program that controls how hardware responds to Windows demand. We will be learning how to check the current version of the driver and whether or not you need to install a new one. We believe our readers will become well informed about their hardware after going through our guidelines.

System Information

You can access the System Information feature Settings > System > About to find the basic information about your system. In an alternative approach, you can right-click on the Start Button (Windows Icon in Task Bar) and press settings to directly enter into the About page. You can find the device specification section, which gives the essential hardware information at a glance. It displays the device name visible to all the users over the local area network (LAN). CPU brand, model number, and frequency are shown with the processor. Installed RAM is significant as sometimes a computer might boot up not detecting a defective or wrongly inserted RAM into the DIMM slot. The device ID can be helpful for technicians and Windows to find the correct drivers for your particular PC.

It is a specialized number generated by the bus driver, unique to every computer. Next, you will find the product ID, which shows the registration key used for installing windows. If you installed windows on your PC, it’s the same ID required to register windows to Microsoft. System type shows whether the operating system is 64-bit or 32-bit. It is used while installing software and drivers to ensure compatibility. This section will show details if you have any Pen or Touch device attached to your PC. While scrolling down under the Windows specification section, your Windows edition, version, installation date, and OS build are shared. Further, you can find opportunities to upgrade the windows edition or change the product key if required.

Device Manager

System information only gives surface information about the PC. If you are willing to dive deep into hardware configuration, then device manager is the way to go. Users can access it by right-clicking the Windows icon in the taskbar and pressing the device manager.

At a glance, you can see categories of all the devices connected to your system. You can expand the particular section to view details of the hardware. It provides the model number of devices. Users can use it to download the latest drivers. If some hardware has a conflict or driver issues, it will be highlighted with a yellow exclamation mark. You can examine the issue by double-clicking the device. A new window will show Device type, manufacturer, installed location, and device status in detail.

Suppose there is any issue regarding the driver. In that case, you can access the driver tab on the window to check the details of your driver or update your driver with windows automated utility. If there is a device that you cannot see in the device manager, then go to the main screen of the device manager. Press the view bar and click show hidden devices to reveal devices not currently connected to your system, but their drivers are installed.

Task Manager

The task manager is the most powerful diagnostic tool in our guide under the heading of How to check PC parts. It shows the performance of your hardware components to pinpoint the bottleneck. A degraded system can be fixed using this tool. You can access the task manager by right-clicking the Windows Icon and pressing the device manager. Otherwise, the user can access it by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+Delete button or Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

• Processes: The first tab is going to be the processes. If you cannot see the process tab, press the “more details” button on the bottom to change the view. You will find columns of software name, status, CPU usage, Memory occupation, Disk usage, Network usage, and GPU usage. If any software is causing your system to bottleneck, it will highlight the hardware column in red that is causing sluggish performance. Click the column to sort the software regarding CPU, RAM, Disk, Network, and GPU utilization. You can stop the software from occupying your hardware resources by right-clicking on it and pressing End Task. It should improve your performance. If essential software is running on your PC that you cannot stop, it’s time to upgrade the hardware, causing the system to a bottleneck or boost your internet speed.

• Performance: Users can observe graphical and more detailed information about their hardware from the performance tab of the task manager.

• CPU: The CPU section would be opened by default, showing the % utilization vs. time graph. As modern CPUs feature, dynamic frequency scaling the changing frequency with load can also be observed through real-time speed indication. The number of processes the CPU currently handles, number of threads running, amount of handles, and total uptime are also shown. Sockets indicate the number of physical processors installed on the motherboard. For most users, it’s going to be one. While server PCs might have two or even more. # of cores and threads, L1, L2, and L3 cache can also be observed, which is essential in gaming.

• Memory: The graph in the memory section indicated the amount of storage space occupied by the running system. You can observe the trend by keeping the task manager open and accessing the software you believe is causing the bottleneck. The section shows the amount of RAM space in use and is available for a novice user. For a tech head, the smaller capacity shows Commit Charge. It shows the total virtual memory all processors require to allocate. If you work with more applications, the commit charge increases and may reach the higher number, Commit Limit. Commit Limit is your total memory, the sum of your RAM space in GB, and the total page file size in GB. Cached memory is the passively used space OS (operating system). The paged pool is the quantity and capacity of RAM the system can move to the pagefile. It is used when the RAM doesn’t have enough capacity to deal with the data. The non-paged pool is weight data stored in RAM that the system cannot move to a pagefile.

• Disk: The disk section is simple; it has active time, data transfer rate, response time, and read/write speed. You can check the capacity of drives through their section. The type of storage device can be seen, whether SSD or HDD. The page file indicates the disk is used for storing data when fully occupied.

• Ethernet: This section observes all your internet or intranet data transmission through LAN or WiFi devices. Information regarding adapter, DNS, connection type, and IP address are available for diagnosis. Send and receive speeds can also be used to check internet service providers' actual bandwidth while streaming gaming or uploading videos.

• GPU: Most graphics card manufacturers have a dedicated application for monitoring the GPU statistics, but a quick diagnostics task manager is an excellent tool. Users can utilize the GPU for 3D, copy, video encoding, and decoding. The task manager ensures all the usage is shown via graphs. The amount of GPU storage used and available shared storage for the GPU can be seen in the same section. Important temperature parameter is also shown.

• Other Tabs: App history shows the amount of time the app has been running in the background and the resources it’s using. You can restart the app history by pressing “Delete Usage History.” The startup section shows all the apps that start when the windows boot up. You can disable some apps if they slow down your system startup. The user tab shows multiple user resource utilization, the details tab shows running application usages, and for advanced users, users can observe windows services from the services tab.

System Information Utility

System information Utility is used by advanced users looking to take a one-stop look at the details of PC hardware. You can access the system information utility by pressing the Windows button and start typing system information. Click on the system information app. The first screen that pops up indicates a details system summary at a glance. To further access specific hardware details, you can expand the root tree of three main categories hardware resources, components, and software environment.

You can access data from a remote PC. Sometimes you might need to compare hardware specifications and audio or video codecs of another PC over the same network. To access other computers' system information, press “View bar” and “Remote Computer.” Type in the name of the machine to access it. You might need an administrator Username and Password to access the information. In the software environment subsection of the running task, users can sort all the installed applications in priority. If the software is higher on the list, it will be allotted most system resources when accessed.

3rd-party Applications

Users can install many third-party applications to access information regarding hardware that might not be available in the windows pre-installed tools. Some of the popular applications are:

• HWiNFO64: It is an easy-to-use tool with visible specifications at a glance. CPU, GPU, Memory, motherboard, Chipset, BIOS, and drives are all available on a single screen. It’s an excellent all-in-one tool for checking your PC components.

• CPU-Z: It is used for comprehensive details of the CPU in particular. A diagnostician can access the running voltage, lithography, TDP, revision, processor instruction, and other information with a simple, easy-to-use, and light application.

• GPU-Z: Graphics cards come with a lot of sensors. While overclocking, they indicate the healthiness of the complete system through temperature, power, fan speed, memory used, memory bandwidth, and the hot spot temperature. It also shows whether your graphics card supports the available technologies with the graphics card.

Everything you need to know

As our final note, we believe after going through all the applications listed in our “How to check PC parts” guideline. Everything you need to know about your hardware will be clear. As a user, you should be well aware of the PC specification. Windows 10 and 11 automatically update the drivers of your hardware through the internet, but if you find your hardware glitching, Users may require roll-back of the driver or uninstallation. It will lead you to utilize the tools stated in the guideline. Users can perform every task from content writing to iterative complex mathematical equation solutions on the PC, and it will improve if we keep all the hardware healthiness in check. As a gamer, you will reach the benchmark performance of your PC by installing and maintaining your drivers. We hope you find the right tools as per your need.