Introduction

Futuremark is a mainstay in the PC DIY press world, thanks to their excellent benchmarking suites we here at TechPowerUp and others use all the time. They are a Finnish company founded in 1997 and were recently acquired by UL (Underwriters Laboratories) which itself has a history spanning over 120 years. One thing that has not changed in all this time is Futuremark's commitment to the quantitative analysis of hardware old and new alike, with recent support for the exploding mobile and VR markets as well. At heart, Futuremark remains dedicated to PC hardware benchmarking, and today, we take a look at their latest offering - PCMark 10.PCMark 8 was released in 2013 and catered to systems built around Windows 7 and Windows 8. As we now know, Microsoft jumped a number with Windows 10, and it is perhaps fitting then that the next version is called PCMark 10 as well. For those unfamiliar with the product, PCMark benchmarks measure complete system performance using tests based on real-world apps and activities. In PCMark 10, these tests work with some included third-party programs as part of the benchmark suite to reflect common tasks performed in the modern workplace. This makes PCMark 10 an ideal, vendor-neutral choice for governments and enterprise organizations that buy PCs in high volumes. Our approach today is to test its applicability for PC hardware enthusiasts; we will see if it can help us quantify the change in performance of the desktop (or laptop) as a whole owing to the hardware changes we will have made. Thanks a lot to Futuremark for providing a press key for this article.