When I first applied to learn tae-kwon-do in the local martial arts center, the trainer looked at me and asked me if I could do 30 push-ups in 1 minute. At first I was irritated when I started to do the push-ups and everyone surrounded me to watch me. But later I realized its importance – the trainer wanted to see if I was fit enough to go through the rigorous training needed to learn taw-kwon-do. At first I was irritated when I started to do the push-ups and everyone surrounded me to watch me. Our machines are not so much different and if you want to run some heavy duty processing in your computer, you should first check if your computer can actually handle all that stress. The freeware utility StressMyPC allows you to easily test your PC for stress under many categories like graphics, processor, hard disk etc.
You can get the StressMyPC software from the SoftwareOK website. The download is a portable application that can be run in all versions of PC including the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. You can just extract the the StreeMyPC.exe file from the downloaded archive to a folder and run it.
The StressMyPC comprised of three basic tests – Paint Stress which tests your GPU, Aggressive CPU Stress which puts pressure on your main processor and the HD Stress which pushes your hard disk read/write capabilities against the wall.
You can select one or more of these tests that you want to test your PC against. But before you begin make sure, you have saved your work, closed all the open windows and do not have any deadlines for finishing up any work. Then you can click on the #StressMyPC on the top-left corner of the StressMyPC application window.
All the tests run simultaneously and stress the three major hardware categories of your PC. If you have a relatively slower PC, then it may hang up or crash. I tried it on my single-core 2.2 GHz processor and the PC froze after one minute. Anyway, if you want to stop the stress test, you can press the same button or press Esc on your keyboard. If you run this application on your notebook PC, chances are that your notebook battery will run out of charge and it will initiate auto-shutdown (due to lack low charge in battery) – making it an ideal application to check how long your notebook battery lasts under heavy PC usage.
Conclusion: The StressMyPC application is simple and small tool to stress various components of your computer to find out what happens when you run exhaustive tasks on your computer. It is uncomplicated and easier to use compared to comprehensive tools like SiSoft Sandra, 3D Mark and Catzilla.
You can download StressMyPC from http://www.softwareok.com/.