The German print magazine C’t (issue 24, 2009) recently published a good overview article of hardware analysis tools. In this post, I listed all tools that that have an English user interface and added a short description. Note that not all of the tools are free; I made a note if it is commercial program.

ASTRA32 – System information tool with support for driver trouble shooting and HDD health status checking. Prices start at $29.95

HWiNFO32 – System information tool. I reviewed the tool a few days ago.

SIW (System Information for Windows) – Is able to run in batch mode and can be used as simple inventory solution. Only free for private use; freeware version doesn’t support reports

SIV (System Information Viewer) – Portable tool that gives a good overview of hardware components. I also reviewed this tool.

Sisoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) – lite version is free for private use. Pro edition supports push install and Windows domains

HWMonitor – Reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, fans speed. I tried the tool a few days ago.

SpeedFan – Monitor the temperature of various hardware components and take measures if certain limits are reached; I reviewed the tool a while back.

CPUBurn – Allows you to heavily load CPU chips; this can be useful if you want to test if CPU cooling works reliably. Also check out CPUKiller which I reviewed some time ago.

RightMark CPU Clock utility: Real-time CPU frequency, throttling and load level monitoring and on-the-fly adjustment of the CPU performance level. Only free for private use.

CINEBENCH – Measures the performance of the main processor and the graphics card

CPU-Z – Gathers detailed information on CPU, mainboard, and memory

GPU-Z – Gathers detailed information on video card and GPU

Rivatuner – Tweaking environment to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters

Atitool – Overclocking utility for ATI and NVIDIA video cards

RightMark Memory Analyzer – Measures real RAM bandwidth, average/minimal latency of different cache levels

HDD Health – Monitors hard disks using Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) and alerts you to impending failure

HD Tune – HD benchmark utility; free version doesn’t support write benchmarks

IOMeter – Another free HD benchmark utility; I reviewed it a while back.

BlueScreenView – Scans minidump files created during “blue screen of death” crashes; useful to analyze crashes caused by device drivers

Device Remover – Detailed view of installed devices; supports bulk removal of devices drivers. Please read my review.