How to check your PC specs on Windows

Before you can check whether your PC runs anything, you need to know what is actually in it. Windows exposes all of this without installing a single tool.

The fastest route: System Information

Press Windows + R, type msinfo32 and press Enter. The summary page gives you:

• Processor — your exact CPU model and clock speed
• Installed Physical Memory (RAM) — how much system memory is fitted
• BIOS Mode and System Model — useful for prebuilt machines
• System Type — confirms you are on a 64-bit installation

For your graphics card, expand Components → Display in the left-hand tree.

For graphics specifically: dxdiag

Press Windows + R, type dxdiag and press Enter, then open the Display tab. This is the most reliable place to find:

• The exact graphics card model
• Display Memory (VRAM) — the figure our checker compares against a game's VRAM requirement
• Your installed driver version and date
• The DirectX version your system supports

If you have both integrated and discrete graphics — very common on laptops — you will see more than one Display tab. The discrete card is the one that matters for games.

Task Manager, for a live view

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc and open the Performance tab. This shows the same information plus something the other tools do not: what your hardware is doing right now.

Two things worth noting here:

• Under Memory, the "Slots used" figure tells you whether you are running single-channel or dual-channel memory. Single-channel memory costs a meaningful amount of performance, particularly on integrated graphics.
• Under Disk, you can see whether each drive is an SSD or an HDD. A growing number of games now list an SSD as a hard requirement.

Settings, for the plain-English version

Settings → System → About gives you the processor, installed RAM and Windows edition in one place. It does not tell you anything about your graphics card, so it is a starting point rather than a complete answer.

What to write down

For our PC checker you need five things:

1. CPU — the full model number, for example "Intel Core i5-12400F", not just "Intel i5"
2. GPU — the full model, for example "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB"
3. RAM — total installed, in gigabytes
4. Storage — free space on the drive you install games to, and whether it is an SSD
5. Operating system — Windows 10 or Windows 11

The model number is what matters. "Intel i7" spans processors from 2008 to today with a performance difference of roughly five times, so a generation-free answer cannot be compared against anything.

Laptop parts are not the same as desktop parts with the same name. A laptop RTX 4060 is a genuinely different chip from a desktop RTX 4060, and its performance depends on the power limit the manufacturer chose. Treat desktop figures as an optimistic ceiling.

Once you have those five, put them into the PC checker and save the profile — you will not have to enter them again.