If you’re investing a lot of money in a gaming computer, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. The good news is that there are many free programs that can help you do the job.
These apps cover a variety of tasks, from focusing on how hard various system components are working to displaying a frame-per-second counter on the screen, and you may want to use a combination of them to monitor your system.
They are related to, but different from, benchmark programs, which run tests on your hardware to give you a performance score that you can compare to other computers. Here, we are talking about instant computer monitoring.
MSI afterburner
A very popular monitoring application, and one you don’t need MSI hardware to use (despite the name): Load up MSI Afterburner and you’ll see a wealth of statistics about the current system state, including GPU and memory load as well as system fans speed.
You can use the screen overlay to keep track of all this information while you’re playing. If you want to start making low-level modifications, there are free tools to overclock your components.
frame rate monitor
FPS Monitor is designed to display key statistics from your game in an overlay that is fully customizable to your needs: you can change the colors, font style, frequency of digital updates, position of the overlay display, and more.
Details that can be displayed include CPU performance, GPU performance, RAM performance, and frames per second (hence the app’s name). You can try the program for free, but you’ll see a message asking for a one-time payment of $9.95.
HWiNF
You can obtain a wealth of diagnostic information from HWiNFO, including internal temperature and voltage, CPU and GPU load, memory status, hard drive activity, and more.
The program helps with comprehensive reading of system diagnostics and troubleshooting issues as well as monitoring performance, and if you delve into the interface, you can let it generate various types of system reports. Free for non-commercial use.
Nzxt Cam
Nzxt is a gaming PC maker, but its impressive PC monitoring tools are free for anyone to use, whether they’re a customer or not. Default profiles provide real-time monitoring of CPU and GPU levels, as well as network and storage activity.
There are tons of screens to explore in Nzxt Cam, including a comprehensive system specs page that walks you through all the components that make up your system. You’ll find some inconspicuous advertisements for Nzxt hardware and accessories, but they’re easy to avoid.
Hardware monitor
While it may lack some of the visual flair of other tools, there’s no doubt how comprehensive HWMonitor’s job is: nearly every system read you can think of is covered here, across CPU, GPU, RAM, system drives, and more.
Data can be saved to give you an idea of how your statistics change over time, which is a useful little window to open regularly. The basic version of the program is free, but you can pay €19.95 (about $22) for the professional version with graphics and other additional features.
