What happens when we buy the newest gaming rig? We start boasting about its powerful hardware no matter where we go. We like to see our friends drop their jaws down on the floor when we describe the gaming performance of our brand new machines. But is our gaming rigs are really that powerful? We can easily find out using a tool like powerMAX.
powerMAX is a burn-in test software for Windows computers. It can stress test your CPU and GPU to their maximum limits. Since it forcibly makes your PC touch the ceiling of the hardware performance, there is a very tiny possibility that something might go wrong. Regular computers are not really designed to be always run at their peak performance for a long time.
This is perhaps why powerMAX shows a warning message as soon as you launch it. The disclaimer warning mentions that this tool can cause irreversible damage to your computer’s hardware. This is because this tool puts various components under so much stress that they may end up stop working and get damaged.
The user interface of powerMAX is a very small. In its small window, you can choose whether you want to run the CPU stress test or the GPU stress test. In the case of the CPU test, you can choose the test type – SSE (streaming single instruction multiple data extensions) or AVX (advanced vector extensions). For the GPU test, you can choose one of the available screen resolutions.
You can choose to run these tests in the fullscreen mode. You have to select a timeout interval – minimum of which is one minute. In order to run these tests, you have to click on the Start button next to these tests. You can run one test at a time, or you can run both tests simultaneously.
The developers of powerMAX state that there is no direct monitoring done by powerMAX and you may want to use a tool like HWMonitor to monitor the CPU and GPU activity, power consumption, or the system temperature.
You can download powerMAX from https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/powermax.html.