How to optimise your Gaming PC

Optimizing your PC for gaming can provide several benefits and enhance your gaming experience. You can achieve better frame rates, reduced stuttering, and smoother gameplay. This allows you to enjoy games the way they were intended to be experienced.

Why you should optimise your Gaming PC

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By optimizing in-game settings, you can enjoy better graphics, sharper textures, improved lighting effects, and more detailed environments, enhancing the overall visual experience. Optimization can help minimize input lag, which is the delay between your actions and their reflection on the screen. Lower input lag provides a more responsive gaming experience, particularly in fast-paced games where quick reactions are crucial.

Some modern games have high system requirements, and optimizing your PC ensures that it meets or exceeds those requirements. This allows you to play the latest and most demanding games without encountering performance issues or compatibility problems.

Optimizing your PC for gaming can also contribute to the longevity of your hardware. By keeping your system cool and managing power settings, you avoid unnecessary strain on component. By doing this, you can help reduce the risk of overheating, hardware failures, or premature wear and tear.

In multiplayer games, where split-second decisions and reactions matter, optimizing your PC can provide a competitive edge. Higher frame rates, reduced input lag, and overall smoother performance can give you an advantage over opponents with less optimized setups.

How to optimise your Gaming PC

It’s important to note that while optimizing your PC can significantly improve gaming performance, it might not be a one-size-fits-all solution. You should experiment with different settings and configurations to find the best performance for your specific hardware and games. Here is a guide to help you optimise your PC to your preferences.

1. Turn on Game Mode

When you use Game Mode, Windows prioritizes your gaming experience by turning things off in the background.

When you’re running a game, Game Mode prevents Windows Update from performing driver installations and sending restart notifications. It also helps to achieve a more stable frame rate depending on the specific game and system.

2. Change your graphics preferences

Changing this setting will allow your GPU to actively participate in how your Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC displays screen content. If you have a dedicated GPU from AMD or NVIDIA, this could vastly increase the overall performance of your operating system

View the list of games and select your graphics preference for each game.

3. Update your drivers

Keeping your system up to date is one of the most important steps to avoid outdated systems and bugs. Update your Windows and make sure your GPU drivers are up to date. Windows can automatically download and install updates as soon as they’re available, however, graphics cards and other hardware require a bit more work.

Updating your graphics driver can also speed up your PC and boost your computer’s performance, not only for gaming but for any multimedia application.

The easiest way to update your drivers if you have a NVIDIA graphics card is to download the Nvidia GeForce Experience application. Go to the drivers tab at the top right corner of the application and check for any updates.

4. Set your monitor refresh rate

Windows won’t always default to using the maximum refresh rate for your connected display. If you have a gaming monitor with a high refresh rate, then you need to turn the setting on both on the monitor and in Windows. Otherwise, the monitor will default to just 60Hz.

Right click on your display page and go to display settings to change your refresh rate. If you don’t see the setting you’re expecting then the chances are you’re using the wrong cable. Some displays might only output the maximum refresh rate with a DisplayPort cable.

5. Use ethernet

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An Ethernet connection is much more secure than a WiFi connection. WiFi network travels through the air and can be more easily intercepted.

In terms of latency, ethernet is often the better choice for gaming. That’s because there’s a direct, wired connection, so data can travel from your device, to the server, and back to the device without anything standing in its way.

6. Close background applications

Close any unnecessary programs or processes running in the background that might be consuming system resources. While most background applications are fairly lightweight, some of them can have an out-of-scale effect on game performance. This includes applications like web browsers, chat clients, and other non-essential software.

You can open Task Manager on your PC and manually close the applications that you would not be using while playing your games. By closing unnecessary background processes, managing system resources, and keeping your PC clean, you can maintain a stable and consistent performance while gaming.

The best Gaming PC builds to consider

Volta PC offers prebuilt and custom PCs that are able to meet the various needs of any gamer, designer and professional. Model A, T and V are ready to use out of the box. You don’t need to spend time researching and selecting individual components, assembling the PC, and troubleshooting any potential compatibility issues. This can be particularly beneficial if you’re not familiar with building PCs or prefer a hassle-free experience.

For those that want to be more involved in the specifications of their PC, they can select their own components at the Custom PC builder webpage. The builder also helps users to select compatible components if they are selecting each component individually, so as to avoid any compatibility issues while building the PC.