Diagnostics tool for performance increase

[NoPuhi]

PCs slowing down seems to be a common problem in older rigs.
Mine has got to that age. It takes a while while alt tabbing from and to games and opening windows/programs. Windows occasionally freeze. The worst freeze happened a couple of days ago when i was cutting up a video in lightworks. The video in question was 1080p, 60fps, 10 minute in lenght. Every time i tried to let it play it would slow down drastically. Even my cursor was unresponsive and teleporting across the screen. I was getting 1 frame every 5 seconds. It stayed like that for a good 10 minutes untill i managed to kill the process through the choppy framerate. And then it took a bit for it to go back to normal. This is the only time i managed to spot something odd. My memory was getting 100-400 faults per second.

Ive been looking around, trying to clean the system, making sure there is no infection, freeing up storage space, watching the resource monitor when it seems slow. I even defragmented a couple of times even tho i know windows does it on its own.
Basically looking for any explanation to why it has slowed down.

My rig:
ASRock B75M-GL R2.0
Intel Core i5-3570 (6MB cache, 3.40-3.80GHz)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 WF2
Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4GB @1600MHz
WD Blue HDD 1TB @7200rpm
LC-Power LC-CC-95
XFX PRO550W PSU

Everything seems to be in order. The temperatures dont go above 70C and msi afterburner is reporting usage of around 80-90% while gaming. But these are games i expect to push my hardware to its limits. I just cant find the weakest link.

Im wondering if there is a software that can maybe run a benchmark test on my components and try to find something for me to work off of.

 

[kanewolf]

If you have tried all the obvious things, I would backup your personal data and do a fresh OS install. If you have years of "stuff" in the registry and DLL folders who knows what a fresh OS install with a clean set of drivers will do for your performance.
Improvement might come from replacing your 8GB RAM with 16GB. Games are getting to where they can require 8GB. Also replacing your HDD with an SSD would improve your performance. Get the SSD and put a clean OS install on it and test it. You will still have your WD Blue with your current config if you don't get any improvement.

 

[NoPuhi]

If you have tried all the obvious things, I would backup your personal data and do a fresh OS install.

Thats what i used to do on my family PC but that seems like more of a workaround. It does speed up a bit but i feel like it goes back to the usual speeds after a couple of months. Part of why im asking is in hopes of understanding and learning how to combat this phenomena. As for the SSD, i think its a bout time. I feel like the rig needs a small upgrade by now.