How to check if your computer is slowing down over time

Even the most powerful computers are not immortal—or else we are still using PCs from decades ago. But it is not easy to accurately determine when a laptop or desktop computer has expired.

You may feel that the apps and websites are not as fast and smooth as before, but with your computer every day, it is difficult to determine when something goes wrong. Here, we will introduce some practical tools that are more objectively evaluating.

These tools should help you determine when you need to upgrade to a new computer and when you need a thorough cleaning of your current computer. We have also written articles about how to speed up Windows, speed up macOS, and speed up web browsing before.

Built-in analysis tool

Both Windows and macOS come with built-in tools for monitoring system performance. On Windows, it is Task Manager: Right-click an empty area on the taskbar and select Task Manager . Under the Process and Performance tabs, you can get a lot of detailed information about how your system resources work under software loads – so you can regularly (weekly or monthly ) Record this data to find any performance degradation.

Task Manager itself does not retain any historical data, but a more advanced tool, Performance Monitor, can do it - you can search for it and start it from the Start menu.

• Right-click Data Collector Set under User-defined .
• Select New and Data Collector Sets.
• Name the collection, select Create from the template, and click Next .
• Select System performance and to complete .

Using the operation and to start the commands, you can run the diagnostic test manually, or you can right-click on your new report and select Properties and Plan Make it run automatically regularly.

Performance monitors are not the most friendly tool, so you may find it easier to just record task manager activities yourself – but if you do want to dig deeper into these performance statistics in more detail, it is a great option. . If you need more details about the tool, check out Microsoft's Performance Monitor Guide.

On macOS, the tool you need is the Activity Monitor, which you can find by opening Finder and selecting Utility from the menu. Like Task Manager, you can view how busy your system's processor, memory, and drives are. However, there is no easy way to automatically log this data, so you have to run the activity monitor regularly and manually record the data you see to check for performance issues over time.

Benchmarking Tool

Third-party benchmarking tools test key components of computer systems and report performance. The idea is to run them regularly, write down scores, and then graph scores over time to see how performance is degraded. The tools we list here are free, but have paid upgrades for more advanced features (such as wider testing and more comprehensive reporting).

For Windows and macOS, Geekbench has long been one of the most reliable benchmarking programs, and it will do a good job of testing your system's main processor (CPU) and graphics processor (GPU). Cinebench is also cross-platform, worth a look, and is often used by professionals to stress test CPUs and GPUs.

Disk drives are usually the first component in your computer to fail, and you can get benchmark software that specifically looks at system storage. We like CrystalDiskMark for Windows PCs and Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test for macOS: They are both easy to use and will give you a lot of information about the health of your drive.

You may have spent a lot of computing time in the browser window, and there are benchmarks to test the performance of your browser. Speedometer is a good starting point as it is developed in partnership with all major browser companies, but JetStream is another reliable option that tests browser launch and website rendering times.

Record key indicators

There is nothing wrong with using a slightly more basic technique: take out your stopwatch (or the one on your phone) and time how long it takes for your computer to start and shut down. Both processes are good indicators of your Windows or macOS machine health and how much stress you are under.

Of course, you have to do this in a few days or weeks to find out if the performance is degraded. But once you have accumulated some data points — probably in a spreadsheet — you should have a useful metric to indicate the performance of your computer and the direction of that performance.

You can do this on the application, too, although in this case the startup time will be faster and any slowdown will be more gradual. If you have a particularly demanding program installed on your system, such as a video editor, you can pay special attention to this – and measuring the time it takes to complete other tasks, such as rendering 4K video, can also help.

For laptops, battery life can be timed the same way, which is another measure of computer health: slower and more stressful components tend to drain the battery faster. However, if you measure the interval between battery charges, make sure you perform the same activity on your computer for fair comparisons (for example, gaming will consume more battery power than email).

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