Some people love to brag about their automobiles, while others love to talk about how powerful their computers are. If you think your system is really a power horse, then you might want to put it under the stress test of HeavyLoad. It is a freeware that puts your Windows computer under a heavy load and allows you test whether your computer will be able to handle so much stress.
HeavyLoad uses many different types of tests for your PC. The individual test methods employed by Heavy Load can be customized to suit your needs. For example, on a system having multi-core processor, you can select how many of the CPU cores shall be put under stress to test them. Basically, HeavyLoad uses the following tests to put stress on your PC :
- Stress CPU – Puts your motherboard processor under heavy stress. It uses complex calculations to simulate the load.
- Stress GPU – Puts your GPU processor under heavy stress. It employs a 3D rendered graphic to simulate a high load on the GPU
- Write Test File – Checks how your system behaves when data is written to your hard disk. It is done by writing a test file to your hard disk with variable speeds.
- Allocate Memory – This test checks the efficiency of your memory modules – how fast they allocate memory to programs when these programs ask them to.
- Simulate Disc Accesses – This tests your hard disk drive in a number of ways. You should not perform this test if your hard disk drive is older than 3-4 years, because perhaps it will not survive the test.
HeavyLoad is available in both the installer and portable application formats. Before you attempt to run it, you should save all your work and close all the open applications. When it stress-tests your PC, it may become unresponsive for a while.
You can click on the icons in the toolbar to select which tests should be performed. Alternatively, you can pick one of these tests from the menubar. You can select the CPU test, write file to HDD test, RAM test, tree-size test and the GPU test. When you are ready, you can click on the Play like icon in the toolbar to start the stress test. The test performance is shown in a graphical form in the main window.
In the options for HeavyLoad, we can choose the number of CPU cores to be used for stress test. It is always a good idea not to use all the cores for test so to avoid the computer from becoming unresponsive. We can also choose the maximum amount of RAM and storage memory file to be used. We can also pick for how long the test has to be run – infinitely or for a number of minutes.
If you are an advanced user and have overclocked your computer, then you can use HeavyLoad to test your PC under heavy stress (it should perform a little better compared to when not overclocked). If your PC does not run reliably under the heavy stress, then it is a possibility that your system cannot handle situations that require pushing the system to the extreme limits. Perhaps you can make your PC work better by upgrading the hardware. For example, just by replacing the hard disk drives with solid state drives, we can improve the PC performance considerably.
You can download HeavyLoad from https://www.jam-software.com/heavyload.