Here are the tools I use as Tom’s Hardware resident CPU reviewer — a cheap aluminum open bench, thermal paste wipes, platform-labeled external power buttons, and more

CPU Reviewing Tools.

I review CPUs for Tom’s Hardware. I don’t review products in a dozen different categories, cosplaying as some expert in each of them; I review CPUs. As you can imagine, my day is filled with cleaning TIM, unmounting coolers, swapping CPUs, and darting back and forth across different platforms to gather the data I need for reviews, comparisons, and just about anything else in the world of CPUs that’s worth taking a closer look at.

We do a lot of benchmarking here at Tom’s Hardware, but CPUs and GPUs require even more than other categories. A full pass of our test suite can take upwards of 10 hours for a single chip, and that doesn’t include the time it takes to swap chips and get benches prepped for another pass. It should go without saying, but efficiency is king for benchmarking CPUs here. We don’t want to (and won’t) sacrifice the abundance of data we gather for reviews, even when going across a dozen or more SKUs for a single review.