Freeware Shorts: HWM BlackBox (System Information)

HWM BlackBox

HWM BlackBox (Version: 2.3 as of this post) is a hardware or system information and profile builder. Much like others of its kind it takes a few seconds upon startup to gather information.

The interface is tabbed and divided into Processor, Memory, Graphics, System and Benchmark. The Processor tab has information on number of cores, speed, cache and technology (90nm, etc.), bus speed, voltage, temperature and also live usage info. Memory has info on RAM slots filled or available, memory type, frequency, manufacturer, serial number CAS Latency and more. Graphics has GPU information like memory, temperature, max speed, DirectX version, raster operators and more. System has computer manufacturer, BIOS version, number of slots (PCI, etc.), fan speed and more, plus information on disc drives, optical drives and network devices. The Benchmark tab works only on Windows Vista and 7 machines. It will run various performance tests most likely only useful to gamers and overclockers.

HWM BlackBox

The arrow to the top right has options to save collected data to text or XML files, change refresh rates for the usage info, take screenshots of the program and a few other settings.

Some specs may not be available depending on the hardware’s and/or BlackBox’s support to retrieve them. HWM BlackBox comes with an online upload tool (see About tab) to measure up benchmarks and system specifications with or against others. HWM BlackBox is a single exe file, exists for both 32 bit and 64 bit systems and and requires the .Net Framework 2.0.

2 comments

  1. HWM BlackBox has a nice and clean tabbed interface but compared to many similar free tools (PC Wizard, Free PC Audit, WinAudit Freeware, System Spec, System Information Viewer, Speccy, my all-time favourite HWiNFO32/HWiNFO64 and many others) the information it provides is a bit scanty. The fact that the benchmark does not work on XP systems lowers its value too. It does not show the list of installed applications, a common feature in simiral tool. It did not show any information about my external hard drives either. Overall, it is far from being the perfect utility for complet system audit although it shows some basic hardware info.

  2. True, BlackBox certainly has limitations compared to many of its kind. Hopefully the developers will add to it and make it more feature rich over time. Thanks Asen.

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