Believe me when I say this, but whenever I ask my friends what’s under the hood or simply put, asking for their laptop or PC’s specifications, they just say its the latest or year old and stuff like that. Usually, they don’t even know the basic of specifications like the RAM or processor. It is highly recommended that you should know the specifications so that at least you can have something to say when you are asked the question.
Why knowing the specs is important?
There are other reasons for knowing the specs too. It is possible that you want to upgrade your PC specs since it has been running slow. Without knowing the specs, it isn’t worth doing so. For instance, if you were thinking about replacing your HDD with an SSD and upgrading your DDR3 RAM on your old laptop, you might as well buy a new laptop altogether.
You must be wishing that you hadn’t thrown away or lost that box that came with the laptop/PC which had all the specs written, but we are here to save you from the ordeal of finding that box with some quick software solutions. If you want to know the very basic specifications see if your laptop or PC has a sticker with some of them written on it. But it might also be, that you upgraded your laptop or PC in the past, or bought a used one with different specifications than mentioned. Therefore, it is always better to find the specs once again.
How to find the specs now?
On Windows 10
If you happen to be on the latest version of Windows i.e. Windows 10, it is easy to do so. You just need to right-click on the start button at the bottom left side and choose Device Manager from the sub-menu. There you will find quite a bunch of information about your PC from the processor to graphics card etc. Though to find the amount and type of RAM installed, there are two ways to go about this.
If you just want to find the total amount of RAM, just right click on the Windows logo (the Start button), and choose System. There you can see the total RAM as well as basic information about your PC and its Operating System. Though to know the RAM type just open the Task Manager by pressing CTRL+Shift+Delete, and head over to Performance and choose RAM, there you can see the RAM type as well.
On Windows 8
You need to go to PC settings and choose PC info by hovering over the top right-hand corner of your screen.
On Windows 7 and XP
Just Right-click on My Computer and select Properties on Windows 7 or System Properties on the good-old XP. On XP, choose System window under Properties. There you can see the processor, memory and Operating System.
Piriform Speccy (One Click Solution)
If you want to avoid this confusion altogether then just download a free application called Piriform’s Speccy. This will analyze your PC and give a complete report of Storage, CPU, Operating System, Graphics, Motherboard, Optical Drivers, Audio, RAM, Network etc.
Finding the Graphics Card:
Doing so is simple to do. You just need to open device manager. You can open it through the control panel or just searching for it (On Windows 8 and above). In the window that opens, there would be a Display Adapters tree. There you will get to know the type of Graphics Card on your PC.