How to Test Your PC for Failing Hardware

Modern PCs are generally reliable, certainly more reliable than they were in the dawn of the PC era (and yes, I was there, and this is a true statement).

But things can still go wrong. Often the failure is gradual or preceded by noticeable warning signs. About three years ago my PC's hard drive gave me a SMART warning. I immediately bought a new hard drive and had the contents of the old drive Ghosted on to it. I am still using the old drive for backing up files and it's still working fine, so go figure. But it could have died and I wasn't prepared to take the chance.

MakeUseOf.com has an article about how to test your PC for failing equipment. It's loaded with tips and information about useful tools. Bookmark this one. It might come in handy some day.

The parts that most commonly break are fans, hard disk drives, CPUs, and GPUs.

RAM also tends to fail too. It is continually being written and re-written to (flashed). Solid-state memory can only handle so many flashes before it begins to fail. The problem also applies to solid-state hard drives.

The best way to avoid being caught out is to perform regular hardware diagnostic tests on your computer. Here’s how to do hardware tests on Windows 10.