PCs flew off the shelves during 2021 — and without the ongoing constraints in the supply chain, people would have purchased even more.

According to reports released by Gartner and IDC, 2021 continued the unexpected surge in demand for PCs and Chromebooks. According to Gartner, PC shipments surged 9.9 percent in 2021 to 339.8 million units. IDC reported even sharper growth: 14.8 percent, up to 348.8 million units. (IDC is a division of IDG, the company that owns PCWorld, but has no editorial affiliation with us.)

The two analyst groups typically differ slightly in how they collect their data. Gartner tracks desktops, notebooks, ultramobiles like the Microsoft Surface, and Chromebooks; IDC tracks desktops, notebooks, and workstations, but not tablets in its year-end reports. Nevertheless, both firms had the same conclusion: Sales were fantastic, and could have been even better if components and finished PCs could have been moved more efficiently.

“2021 has truly been a return to form for the PC,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers, in a statement. “Consumer need for PCs in emerging markets and global commercial demand remained strong during the quarter with supply being a gating factor. While consumer and educational demand has tapered in some developed markets, we continue to believe the overall PC market has reset at a much higher level than before the pandemic.”

IDC and Gartner reported that Lenovo, HP, and Dell maintained their position at the top of the PC market, both worldwide and in the United States. All three showed growth.

Gartner / IDC

In the fourth quarter, traditionally the year's strongest period, the two firms found that the supply chain constraints held back sales that would otherwise have gone to the PC industry. “A challenging logistical environment, coupled with ongoing supply-side shortages, meant that the PC market could have been even larger than it was in 2021,” Tom Mainelli, group vice president of IDC's Device and Consumer Research, said in a statement. “We closed the year with many buyers still waiting for their PC orders to ship. As we move through the first half of the year, we expect supply to remain constrained, especially with regards to the commercial segment where demand is the most robust.”

Gartner / IDC

Gartner agreed, noting that the fourth quarter showed a double-digit decline in sales from the fourth quarter of 2020, when PC sales really took off. Chromebook shipments fell, too, as buyers had already snapped them up earlier in the year. Gartner said that it expects PC demand to slow for at least the next two years, though annual shipment volumes are not expected to decline to pre-pandemic levels in that period.

“The pandemic significantly changed business and consumer PC user behavior, as people had to adopt to new ways of working and living,” said Mikako Kitagawa, a research director at Gartner. “Post-pandemic, some of the newly established ways of using PCs will remain regular practice, such as remote or hybrid workstyles, taking online courses and communicating with friends and family online.”

Intel's Core i9-12900HK indeed fulfills the company's proclamation of being the “The fastest mobile processor. Ever,” based on the results of our early, exclusive hands-on performance testing of several 12th-gen laptops.

Intel, which unveiled its 12th-gen Alder Lake laptop CPUs just last week at CES, let PCWorld take four nearly identical laptops outfitted with the Core i9-12900HK for a spin during a live stream of our Full Nerd podcast. You can watch us run the benchmarks live in the recording of our live stream below.

While the four preproduction laptops aren't quite final units, they're based on MSI's GE76 Raider with final drivers, firmware and tuning still to come. The laptops were outfitted with the 14-core Core i9-12900HK CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU, 32GB of DDR5/4800 RAM, and Windows 11. The updated GE76 remains the same externally as the previous-gen model, but there have been some upgrades to it, including a new MSI “phase-change liquid metal” thermal pad that boosts the CPU's performance. MSI has also tweaked the 12th-gen laptop's GPU to 175 watts, versus the 11th-gen version's 165 watt TGP GPU.

We ran all but the gaming benchmarks on laptops set to MSI's balanced profile, rather than its extreme performance profile, and also set to hybrid GPU mode rather than discrete mode. That's actually how Intel set the laptops up in its lab, which we left intact. Normally we'd opt for the higher performance profile to get the best possible performance, but we left them as set and just wanted to point it out to shoot down assumptions that Intel might have “rigged” this performance preview by opting for the maximum cooling settings.

We picked the tests we wanted to run, and ran them ourselves live on The Full Nerd (subscribe to PCWorld's YouTube channel if you aren't already), but make no mistake—these are laptops from Intel's own testing labs so you should always read the results with some modicum of salt until independent reviews are performed. We do believe the CPU performance you see here is likely be fairly representative of performance the production laptop reaches. But no two laptops are the exact same—even among the same make and model—so you should expect a little variance in high-end Alder Lake gaming laptops, but hopefully not huge swings.

You should know, however, that a CPU and GPU's performance isn't static. The magic each PC maker brings to it in cooling, tuning, and chosen parts can have very large impacts on performance. Basically, there is no such thing as completely isolating the CPU in a laptop. You must evaluate performance based on the total platform, not just the CPU or GPU inside of it.

To give you a point of comparison, we've included two additional laptops:

• The previous-generation MSI GE76 Raider outfitted with an 8-core 11th-gen Core i9-11980HK, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with a TGP of 165 watts, and 32GB of DDR4/3200. This laptop set to its Extreme performance setting.
• An Asus Strix Scar G17 outfitted with AMD's 8-core Ryzen 9 5900HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with a TGP of 130 watts, and 32GB of DDR4/3200. This laptop was tested set to Turbo.

Unfortunately, due to our time constraints we were unable to update the 11th-gen Core and Ryzen 9 laptops to Windows 11. Fortunately, for many of the CPU benchmarks we ran, the OS difference can be minimal.

Intel Core i9-12900HK performance preview

We'll kick off our preview with Maxon's popular Cinbench R20 using its default multi-threaded test. Cinebench is based on the company's Cinema4D 3D modelling and rendering engine that's sold as a stand-alone application and also included in other products, such as Adobe's After Effects. It hugs cores to its body, and more cores means more speed. The results we see aren't much of a surprise when you remember that Intel's 12th-gen Alder Lake H processors feature a hybrid design, using six improved “performance cores” coupled with eight “efficiency cores” in this flagship Core i9-12900HK. That means 14-cores (even if eight of them are lighter weight than the Ryzen's and 11th gen cores) nets more performance in Cinebench R20.

Still, you're looking at the 12th-gen Core i9 outpacing the Ryzen 9 5900HX and the Core i9-11980HK by roughly 30 percent.

IDG

As much as we wish they would, the vast majority of applications people use don't tap into every core available. In fact, single-core performance may matter what for what you do everyday more than multi-core performance, so we also ran Cinebench R20 using a single-thread to gauge performance there.

Intel's 12th-gen “Alder Lake” cores greatly boost efficiency per clock and we see that manifest itself here, where the 12th gen Core i9-12900HK is roughly 16 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 5900HX and 9.3 percent faster than the 11th gen Core i9-11980HK. Mind you, neither of those rival CPUs are slow chips either. Last summer, in fact, it felt like AMD's newly released Ryzen 9 5900HX was a monster compared to all previously released CPUs, which was then itself somewhat eclipsed by the equally impressive 11th Core i9-11980HK. Obviously, there's a new goliath in town.

IDG

Up next is the very similar Cinebench R23, which unlike Cinebench R20, takes about 10 minutes to run. That point is important because modern CPUs all generate heat as they run and ease off the pedal when they heat up. While Cinebench R20 takes maybe a minute or so to run, the 10 minutes of Cinebench R23 is likely to depress performance. The good news for 12th-gen is it's still the winner, since 14 cores is still more than 8 cores. The performance difference between the CPUs close up a little but the Core i9-12900HK still offers a commanding 23 percent advantage over the Ryzen 9 5900HX and 16 percent over the 11th-gen Core i9.

One other advantage to running Cinebench R23 is Mac fans can also compare performance directly, since Maxon's Cinebench R23 has native version for Apples new M1 line. While we have not directly tested the MacBook Pro 14, our sister publication Macworld has, and recorded a score of 12,381 for the MacBook Pro 14 with its 10-core M1 Pro CPU. That would give the 12th gen Core i9-12900HK a 21 percent advantage over a MacBook Pro 14. Macworld didn't review the M1 Max, but others outlets have outlets have reported performance to range from 12,300 to 12,700 for the faster M1 Max.

IDG

Like Cinebench R20, we also record a score in Cinebench R23 using a single thread. Interestingly, we actually see the gap open up a little here, with the 12th gen Core i9-12900HK outpacing the Ryzen 9 5900HX by about 26.5 percent and the 11th gen Core i9-11980HK by 16.6 percent. For the M1 Pro in the MacBook Pro 14, Macworld recorded a score of 1,531. That's an advantage of 23.6 percent for the 12th-gen CPU over the M1 Pro.

IDG

Up next is BAPCo's CrossMark benchmark. It's essentially a scaled-down version of its sprawling SYSMark test, which uses real applications to gauge performance. But rather than commercial applications, CrossMark is built using open-source programs and intended to gauge productivity, creative (photo and video), and responsiveness, which it defines as switching between software or starting an application. It's compiled with open-source compilers and is designed to run on Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android alike. On the Windows PCs, the 12th-gen Core i9 is a beefy 36 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 5900HX and also impressive 21.5 percent faster than the 11th-gen Intel chip.

Again, we didn't have a score for CrossMark for MacOS, but the public database BAPCo publishes puts the fastest M1 Max laptop at 1,670, which lands the Core i9-12900HK at about 18 percent faster. Like all public benchmark databases, it's always hard to know the provenance of the results, but we'll hope for the best. Looking into the details, M1 Max does slightly outpace the 12th-gen Core i9 in the Creativity portion, with a score of 2,254 vs. the 12th gen's 2,132, but the newest Intel CPU beats it in productivity by 25 percent with a score of 1,874. Interestingly the Alder Lake H system also crushes the M1 Max in CrossMark's “Responsive” test to the tune of 59.9 percent, with a score of 1,836 for the Core i9.

IDG

All-in-one suites such as CrossMark attempt to measure everything you might do on your computer, but the vast majority of the world brings home the turkey bacon using Microsoft's Office suite. So to keep Bill Lumberg happy, we also ran UL's Procyon Office test, which uses Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook to simulate what most people do all day while waiting for 5 p.m. to come. The 12th gen Core i9-12900HK wins, but it's really just a meh, with Intel's new chip outpacing the 11th-gen Core and Ryzen 9 systems by only 5 percent. Frankly, if you're using a Core i9 or Ryzen 9 with a GeForce RTX 3080 to primarily pound out a PowerPoint, you're probably doing it wrong.

IDG

Our next result is Principled Technologies WebXprt 3. It's a web-based benchmark designed to measure browser performance at photo enhancement, organizing an album using AI, stock option pricing, encryption notes, OCR scans, sales graphs, and online homework. These are fairly advanced features for a browser test. All of our results were generated using Edge on the Chromium 97.

The Core i9-12900HK again leads the field, turning in a score about 9.5 percent faster than the 11th-gen chip and 16.2 percent faster than the Ryzen 9.

IDG

We did manage to run games on the 12th gen Core i9-12900HK, but there are a lot of caveats with our comparison that we really want to highlight in yellow. Although all of the laptops feature GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPUs, their power ratings weren't the same, which can make any comparison in gaming really sketchy. That's especially true for the Ryzen 9 system, which was paired with a GPU rated at 130 watts vs. the 11th-gen's 165 watts, and the 12th-gen's 175 watts. That's basically a 27 percent larger thermal and power budget for the 11th-gen laptop and 35 percent for the Core i9-12900HK laptop. Between the 11th-gen and the 12th-gen, there's only about a 6 percent difference in GPU power.

That said, should also point out that one of the problems we saw last year was difficulty in getting a lot of gaming laptops with higher wattage GPUs. So if most 165 watt GPUs were only in Intel machines, then maybe it's actually a fair comparison?

Gaming performance isn't always about GPU wattage though and we see that below in our first result from Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. We ran this benchmark at 1080p using the Crazy preset for graphics and opt for the CPU-focused benchmark run. The CPU-focused benchmark puts more units on the screen, which should push the CPU harder than the regular GPU-focused test. You can see the Ryzen 9 and 11th-gen systems are dead-even despite have a sizeable GPU thermal budget difference. That actually makes us even more impressed by the Core i9-12900HK's 11.7 percent lead over the others. The test basically doesn't seem to care about GPU wattage yet Intel's new chip is ahead by double-digits in the CPU test.

IDG

Our next game result is Far Cry New Dawn run at 1080p using the ultra preset. The caveat here is this game series has long given AMD's chips the raspberry, but that changed with the Ryzen 5000-series of desktop chips, which saw AMD actually eclipse Intel's best 10th-gen desktop chip at last. The laptop Ryzen 5000, however, features less cache, which may not give it the same boost. Still, given the 35 percent larger GPU thermal budget in the Core i9-12900HK laptop, we don't think it's necessarily fair to make direct comparisons with the Ryzen 9 system, so consider it there for reference.

We do think it's fair to compare performance against the 11th-gen GE76 Raider, however, since both GPUs are separated by just 10 watts of power. The 12th-gen GE76 with a Core i9-12900HK inside pulls up the win by double digits, with a frame rate about 11.8 percent faster.

IDG

Our last game result is from the popular Counter Strike: Global Offensive which is a graphically low-intensity game in this age. We assumed that would make it mostly a CPU-intensive game, but the results interestingly mostly mirror the GPU wattage differences between the different laptops. The Core i9-12900HK laptop is still faster than the 11th-gen notebook, but we're oly looking at roughly a 6 percent win. We'll just have to wait for final drivers to really make any determination in gaming.

IDG

We saved our last official result for the Official Benchmark of Twitter Shouting Matches: Geekbench 5. It's a popular, cross-platform benchmark based around a set of small programming “loops” that are designed to simulate various functions such as JPEG decompression, text decompression, encryption, AI and more. We find most of Geekbench's value to be in the sub-scores that let you dive into each individual result's performance. We also generally only compare results on the same platform. But that's not how Twitter hot takes are created, so we'll stick with just the overall score here.

The result gives the Intel Core i9-12900HK a massive 56.6 percent advantage over the Ryzen 9 5900HX chip. The 12th-gen chip is equally impressive compared to its predecessor, with a 40 percent increase in performance over the 11th-gen Core i9. Again, it's worth remembering that these are not slow CPUs, with the 11th-gen Core and Ryzen 9 chips delivering jaw-dropping performance just last summer—making the 12900HK's win all the more staggering.

We don't have an in-house score for the M1 Pro, so we'll crib from Macworld again. It reports a score of 12,590 for the 10-core M1 Max and a score of 12,544 for the 10-core M1 Pro. That puts the M1 Max just 6 percent away from the 12th-gen Core i9, and although Geekbench's utility as the final word on performance has some real limits, it's still an impressive showing nonetheless for both Apple's M1 and Intel's 12th-gen chips.

IDG

What happens when you try to deconstruct the performance of an 8-core Ryzen 9 or 11th-gen Core i9 versus a 10-core M1 Max and the 14-core Core i9-12900HK? You look at GeekBench 5's single-core performance benchmark. Against the Ryzen 9, the 12th-gen Core i9 shows an advantage of 27 percent, and a 14.6 percent gain versus the 11th-gen Core chip.

Referencing Macworld's review of the MacBook Pro again, we see near identical scores of 1,774 for the M1 Max and 1,778 for the M1 Pro—basically within the margin of error. That puts the Core i9-12900HK with a 6.8 percent win over the M1 Pro and M1 Max so, yes, head for Twitter folks.

IDG

For our last score, we ran PugetBench's Premiere Pro benchmark, but this is one test where we wonder if more tuning is yet to come. PugetBench is Puget System's popular benchmark that measures a fairly advanced set of actions and exports in Adobe's Premiere Pro.

We unfortunately don't have scores for the Ryzen 9 and the 11th-gen Core i9 laptops using the current version of Premiere Pro (22.1), so we dug up some published scores from PugetBench's database of user generated scores. Since we have no idea what conditions they were run in, we don't have the same faith in them as the scores from, say, Macworld or other reviewers. Still we did see a score in the database of 693 for a Ryzen 9 5900HX laptop with a GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU, and a score of 892 from an Core i9-11980HK laptop with a GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. The Core i9-12900HK coughed up a solid 1,037, which would make you think it's case closed. The problem for the 12th-gen Core i9 is the reported score in PugetBench's database for an M1 Max MacBook Pro: 1,324. Like the Ryzen 9 and 11th gen Core i9, we don't know the conditions run for that MacBook Pro, but it's impressive nonetheless.

At the same time, we've seen very large performance swings in PugetBench's Premiere Pro benchmark based on the QuickSync capability in Intel's integrated graphics cores. It's entirely possible we'll see the Core i9-12900HK's PugetBench score move up with final drivers. And it's also possible it won't move at all either. We'll have to wait and see.

And that, ultimately, is the weakness of any performance preview. While it's been fun to see Intel's 12th-gen Core i9-12900HK strut its stuff and outpace its Ryzen 9, 11th-gen Core i9, and M1 Max rivals in many tasks, you need to wait until we have final numbers from reviewers of final products before making any buying decisions. Hopefully you won't have to wait long.

The 5GHz war between AMD and Intel is back in full force if this year's CES is any indication.

As part of their “one more thing” teases, both companies demonstrated desktop CPUs running at 5GHz or greater. AMD's started the rap battle by demoing its next-gen Ryzen 7000 processor running the game Halo Infinite with all of the CPU cores reportedly at 5GHz or above. Which CPU model and how many cores wasn't disclosed, but we're assuming at least 8-cores or more cores for it to be impressive.

Two hours later, Intel fired back with its own game demo of Hitman 3 being played on an upcoming 12th-gen Core i9 “KS” chip, with every performance core running at 5.2GHz. While impressive, Intel doesn't technically qualify for the “all-core boost” prize since the remaining efficiency cores buzzed along at “only” 4GHz. But those performance cores are really what matters when it comes to gaming.

Why is 5GHz such a big deal: You

We know, you're making the whatever face at all this chest puffing because it's no big deal. After all, the original 5GHz line on a desktop PC was crossed with AMD's FX-5950 chip almost nine years ago and no one cared back then either. So why does it matter this time?

Intel / YouTube

We'd mostly agree that breaking the 5GHz barrier isn't quite the massive deal that AMD and Intel are making it out to be on a practical level when it comes to gaming, but increases in all-core clocks will also generally mean real performance gains for applications and tasks that use more cores. So if you run 3D modelling, lean into Adobe Premiere and Lightroom, or run advanced analysis using Microsoft Excel, the higher all-core boosts should net you decent gains of everywhere from 8 to 11 percent.

Still, the 5GHz breakthrough isn't a game-changer until you consider its biggest advantage: Marketing. Slapping “5GHz” on a CPU box or PC works magic on consumers like nothing else. Yes, logically your brain tells you that 4.9GHz is basically the same as 5GHz, but emotionally that round number tickles all kinds of spots. Don't believe us? Then why are things 99 cents instead of 1 dollar? Or new laptops listed for $2,499 and cars at $27,995? The obvious answer is that silly humans really respond to how we perceive numbers. And it works in every culture across the planet and likely through history. We're sure the first barter ended up going for 19 chickens.

Robert Hallock, the director of technical marketing at AMD, broke down the concept during a recent CES 2022 interview on our Full Nerd podcast. (Jump to the 14:26 mark to hear his “5GHz” vs. “World's best” thoughts, but really, watch the whole thing—Robert and AMD gaming architect Frank Azor dropped all sorts of interesting knowledge bombs on the show.)

“We done all sort of market research on what is sticking with people,” Hallock said. “When they see a letter, or a number, or a spec on the box, what moves the needle and what doesn't? Big round whole numbers—like 4.0, 4.5, 5.0—that moves the needle quite a lot in consumer preference. But something like 5.1 or 5.2 barely registers on the Richter scale.”

So yes, the push for all-cores at 5GHz and higher is indeed significant, but mostly because big round numbers still work on humans. Fortunately, CPU makers have other ways to push the pedal to the metal with performance.

“Above [the stickiness of round numbers] is use-case relevance,” Hallock continued. “You've moved from specs to ‘is this good for me, and what I want to do?' And so if you're looking for the best CAD CPU, the best gaming, the best software development, the best compiling, that carries even more weight than a spec… And I think that over the last two or three years in particular, we've seen a decline on general market focus on frequency. I think people are realizing that (for example) Ryzen can come to the table at 4.6 or 4.7GHz and credibly beat a CPU that might be running at 5.1 to 5.2, and that's a 500 to 600 megahertz spread, how do you reconcile that? And maybe the answer is that sometimes frequency doesn't always matter.”

It's in AMD's interest to say that of course, as the company is pitching its upcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D with radical new V-Cache technology as the “world's best gaming CPU,” claiming that it topples Intel's Core i9-12900K and even AMD's own Ryzen 9 5900X despite a noticeable decrease in clock frequencies thanks to all that extra cache stacked on top of the chip. Squeezing ever-more performance out of these increasingly complex pieces of silicon isn't as simple as just cranking up the clocks anymore, as Hallock explains in other portions of the interview.

But make no mistake: Faster chips are nothing but a good thing, no matter how that speed is achieved, and we're looking forward to the 5GHz war brewing in 2022. Intel's 12th-gen KS chip is scheduled to launch sometime this quarter, with Ryzen 7000 CPUs expected in the second half of the year. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D that AMD says will be the “world's fastest gaming CPU” despite topping out at 4.5GHz boost clocks will be available this spring.

Interested in virtually a PC before doing it in real life? Today, you can build an endless number of virtual PCs thanks to Humble's PC Building Simulator Bundle. The bundle features the base game for just one dollar. As this is a Humble Bundle, however, there are three tiers that open up a ton of DLC if you're willing to pay more.

It's no secret that we're fans of PC Building Simulator. Back in 2018, we said it “might be one of the most important DIY enthusiast tools ever created.” It's a nice little tool/game that can get you up and building PCs (virtually) in no time. That said, it does lack some of the finer points of PC building like the all-important cable management.

If you're willing to go up to the 4 item bundle, which is currently priced at $6.29 (this middle tier cost is pegged to the average payment), you'll get access to the ROG Workshop DLC, the Razer Workshop DLC, and the Overclocked DLC. The Overclocked includes a bunch of NZXT cases like the H700i.

Finally, there's a $15 bundle that adds another six DLC packages with components from EVGA, Fractal Design, Aorus, NZXT, and the always popular esports expansion.

Build the pretend PC of you dreams for just $15 today or more if you'd like to give a little extra to support the charities that benefit from this bundle.

[Today's deal: Humble PC Building Simulator Bundle for $15 at HumbleBundle.com]

There's a reason that unboxing videos and the phrase “new car smell” are firmly ensconced in the public groupmind. New stuff is exciting! New stuff is (theoretically) better! New stuff is just plain cool.

But new stuff also costs an arm and a leg—at least if you're talking about a new PC. And you might not even truly need a new PC to accomplish what you're looking to do, because most everyday tasks don't require much processing power, especially now that so many services have moved onto the web.

Fortunately, there are a slew of ways to breathe new life into an older PC that's starting to feel a little pokey. Even better: Most are outright free, a couple of (still relatively low-cost) hardware upgrades aside. Sure, these tweaks and tips aren't as thrilling as booting up a brand new PC for the first time—but they'll let you continue to get the job done with the gear you already have. Try them before you invest in some shockingly cheap PC upgrades or even a whole new laptop.

Streamline your startup

Let's start with the simpler things first. If your computer is chugging, too much software booting at system start may just be to blame. Before you take more drastic measures, clean up your startup by opening the Startup tab of Windows 10 or 11's Task Manager, or typing “msconfig”—minus the quotation marks—in Windows 7 and opening its Startup tab.

While you don't want to disable Windows processes, or processes related to your hardware, ruthlessly eliminate anything else that you can identify if at all possible. You wouldn't want to prevent your antivirus from launching at startup, but there's no reason for Steam or Adobe Reader to hog your system resources except for when you explicitly need them. Windows helpfully tells you how much of an impact each program has on your startup time. Take out any High-impact, non-essential programs first, then move down the list from there.

Spring cleaning pt. 1

If cutting back your boot programs doesn't do the trick, it's time to try some deeper cleaning. Eradicate any programs you don't actually use—PC makers stuff computers full of bloatware. Search for “Add or remove programs” in the Windows search box and work through the list of installed programs.

The best overall antivirus

Norton 360 Deluxe

Read our review

MSRP: $99.99

Best Prices Today: $9.99 at PCWorld Software Store | $29.99 at Amazon | $35 at Norton

Run a security sweep while you're at it, in case malware is slowing down your system. PCWorld's guide to the best antivirus suites can help, but the Windows Security tool built right into Windows 10 and 11 does a surprisingly good job at eradicating threats. Don't bother defragmenting your storage. You shouldn't even defrag SSDs, and if you have a traditional spinning hard drive, most modern operating systems perform the task automatically.

Spring cleaning pt 2

Scrub your hardware while you're busy scrubbing all that unwanted software, too. Ideally, you want to clean out the interior of your PC once per year, but let's be honest—most people never pry open their case and blow out the dust bunny horde. Over time, the accumulated gunk can wreak havoc with temperatures inside your PC, which in turn makes your PC components either throttle back performance to compensate for the increased temperatures, or just plain struggle.

No joke: Once a family member called me over because his PC was sluggish and unresponsive. Merely cleaning out the inches of dust inside his machine made the system run like new. Check out PCWorld's guide to PC cleaning before cracking open your case. (Why not clean your keyboard while you're at it, too? It can get gnarly under those buttons.)

Reinstall Windows

Still running slow? We're running out of pure software optimization tricks now. Windows is notorious for slowing down over time. If you've never refreshed your PC with a fresh Windows install, now's the time to do it.

Back up all your critical system data, either by cobbling together native Windows tools or investing in a comprehensive Windows backup program (our current favorite is the superb Acronis True Image 2021). Make sure you have your Windows product key in hand—Belarc Advisor can help if need be—and follow this guide to slap a fresh, factory-new copy of Windows on your computer. (The article's a few years old, but the info's still good.) Be warned: If you're using a manufacturer-supplied recovery disk, you'll need to clean all the preinstalled bloatware off your machine after reinstalling Windows.

Overclock! (Or undervolt)

Don't have money for new gear? Overclocking—using software to manually speed up the clock speeds of your hardware—lets you get more out of what you already have, though most laptops lock down the capability. Assuming your desktop PC has proper cooling and a CPU that's capable of overclocking (Intel limits it to chips with a “K” designator at the end), boosting your processor and graphics card's clock speeds can have a noticeable effect on your PC's performance.

Boosting your computer processor is a manual endeavor, and our guide to overclocking your CPU can walk you through each step. It's easier on modern GeForce and Radeon graphics cards. You can choose to apply an automatic overclock to your GPU in the Wattman section of AMD's Radeon Settings tool, and Nvidia's GeForce Experience software offers an auto-overclocking feature of its own. If your software doesn't, or if you want to push your overclocks to the furthest possible limits (as auto-OC tools tend to be conservative), our guide to overclocking your graphics card manually can help.

Alternatively, if your older graphics card is running hot in your system, undervolting it could be the key to taming it, and keeping it happy for months to come. Our guide to undervolting pros and cons walks through why you should (or shouldn't) reduce the juice to your GPU.

Install an SSD

If your computer's still feeling crippled after all the software tricks, you have a couple of different options: Change out some hardware, or completely alter how you use your PC. Let's dig into the former first.

The best ssd for most people

SK Hynix Gold S31 SATA SSD

Read our review

MSRP: $118.99

Best Prices Today: $92.99 at Amazon

When it comes to pure performance, upgrading from a traditional hard drive to a solid-state drive is like trading in your Volkswagon Beetle for a Ferrari. Seriously: Upgrading to an SSD will utterly blow you away, supercharging everything from boot times to application launches to file transfers. This is the single most noticeable PC upgrade most people can make. An SSD can make even a clunky old laptop feel comparatively snappy, and you can find all sorts of drives going for around 10 cents per gig these days, so you can get a 500GB drive for roughly $50 to $60 if you shop around.

Pretty much any SSD will smoke even the fastest hard drives, but our roundup of the best SSDs can guide you towards the best options. We have a guide to installing an SSD in your laptop, too.

Add more RAM

Windows 10 has an impressively small footprint, but if you're running a computer with less than 8GB of RAM, it can negatively affect your performance in other ways. Memory-constrained systems are slower at gaming, slower at booting up, and can start to choke if you begin to multitask heavily (including having too many browser tabs open at once). Adding more RAM can help. You'll want to completely replace the memory in your system if you're upgrading to avoid potential conflicts, but an 8GB memory module (or an 8GB kit of two 4GB modules) can often been found for under $50 at basic speeds.

Upgrading your desktop memory is easy: Just pop out the sticks located in the slots next to the CPU in your motherboard, then swap in the new ones. Be sure you've chosen the right RAM type first, though. Notebooks can be trickier. Check out our guide to upgrading your laptop's RAM if you need help.

Switch to Linux

Sometimes it's just not worth putting new hardware into an old PC. But that doesn't make it useless! If you still need to use your aging laptop or desktop as an day-to-day actual computer, installing an operating system with a lighter footprint than Windows can help you eke more life out of an aging PC.

Linux tends to run better than Windows on less potent hardware. In fact, several Linux variants are specifically designed with ultra-minimalist requirements so they're able to run on old PCs—Puppy Linux, LXLE, and Lubuntu come to mind immediately. The transition from Windows to Linux isn't as rough as it used to be, but you'll still want to check out our beginner's guide to Linux, including the software recommendations on the last page.

Embrace cloud gaming

Linux isn't the only way you can repurpose a computer. Rather than using a pokey PC as a traditional do-it-all machine, consider giving your system a singular role if you have another PC you can use as your primary rig. Let's look at some ways you can make obsolete computers purposeful once again.

If you're a gamer, the easiest option for an old laptop is simply to use it to game while you're away from your main gaming rig. “But Brad!” I hear you wailing. “You can't game on an old PC!” Ah, but you can with a decent Internet connection. After years of teasing, the promise of cloud gaming's finally coming true, letting even the most humble computers get in on the action by streaming your gameplay from far-away servers, Netflix-style. Nvidia's GeForce Now is the best bet for PC gamers, as you BYO games by linking your existing accounts to various platforms. Better yet, there's a surprisingly full-featured free tier, as well as a killer RTX 3080 tier that unlocks top-shelf hardware, longer session times, and ultra-fast refresh rates on compatible displays and devices at $99 for six months. Check out our guide to whether GeForce Now is worth it if you have any questions.

Microsoft's killer Xbox Game Pass Ultimate also unlocks game streaming to a vast library of games as part of its $15 per month fee, though you'll be streaming the Xbox versions of those games on your PC. Here's how to get Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for cheap if you want it. Other options (like Google Stadia and Amazon Luna) exist but they're less attractive, especially to PC gamers.

And there's always Steam in-home streaming if you want to use an older PC as a secondary gaming computer. Steam in-home streaming runs games on your beefy gaming rig, but beams them over your home's Wi-Fi network so you can play them on other devices. It's like cloud gaming, but right inside your home.

Fling some files

Speaking of repurposing your hardware, two common uses are to transform an old PC into a dedicated home theater PC or a file server.

It's not even that hard to do, though obviously it means your PC's email and Office days are over. Some awesome free software available for each use: Snag MediaPortal, OpenELEC, or Kodi (the new name for the uber-popular OS formerly known as XBMC) for a would-be HTPC or FreeNAS to build out a badass home server.

Bite the bullet

Sometimes, though, a system is just too far gone to be of practical use. If your old dog needs to be brought behind the shed, we can help you find a new computer. Our guides to the best laptops in general, the best laptops for college students, and the best fire-breathing gaming laptops can help point you in the right direction for your needs.