This guide on optimizing PC or laptop running Windows 10 and 11 will be useful both as general optimization and as optimization for gaming. First of all, a little spoiler, you can achieve a performance increase of up to 20% even on a fast and properly running system.

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🎮 How To Optimize PC for Gaming | Up to 20% FPS increase

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Cooling system maintenance

The first thing your device needs is a properly working cooling system. The fact is that between the crystal of your processor and the graphics card with a heatsink there is a layer of thermal paste, and depending on the paste quality and the operating conditions, the paste loses its properties, it dries up over time.

As a result, we get overheating and throttling. This is a - usually undesirable - phenomenon that reduces the frequency of the processor (CPU) or graphics card (GPU). It is typically caused by exceeding a specified maximum temperature limit at which the system must operate.

Not only do you experience throttling with a bad cooling system, but the degradation of the semiconductors of your processor and graphics card crystals increases much faster. Another possible outcome of untimely replacement of thermal paste leads to the GPU chip breakoff, which leads to rather expensive repair, and for old graphics cards such repair is often inappropriate.

I recommend cleaning and replacing the thermal paste (about) every ~2 years if you have a good thermal paste. I do not advise you to try to do the cleaning with the replacement of the paste on your own without the necessary experience, you risk causing irreparable harm.

I have repeatedly heard stories about self-cleaning and as a result, improper application of thermal paste with subsequent overheating. The worst outcome is damage to the crystal surface, which would make your computer completely unusable and beyond repair.

  1. CPU throttling detection

To find out if you have processor throttling, use the AIDA64 utility, it will also be of use further on for PC optimization purposes. Download and install it. After that, run the program, go to the Service tab and select System stability test.

You will see two graphs. The first one, the blue line, shows the current temperature. The second one, the yellow line, is processor load, and the green or red line is throttling. If the line is green, there’s no throttling, if the line is red, throttling occurs.

Press the Start button (at the bottom of the screen) to start the test. It loads the CPU up to 100%. Then, within 3-5 minutes observe the charts, if the throttling line is equal to 0%, it’s fine. Otherwise, you will find out how much your processor is idle, and at what temperature throttling starts.

  1. GPU throttling detection

Another popular tool for benchmarking and error checks is Furmark. Along with the Furmark benchmark, we'll need GPU-Z to monitor core clock and temperature. We launch both applications, observe the temperature growth rate and the frequency of the video card core.

If temperatures rise rapidly during the test (for example, above 85 degrees), and the core frequency decreases, this is a sign that you have a problem and the cooling system needs servicing.

Tip: use the newest OS version. Many Windows users are known to run it for many years without any icks and issues, while some users could mess it up in a short period of time and as a result the system is slow, prone to errors, viruses et cetera.

Without a backup copy of the system, cleaning and trying to remove errors most likely will not give the anticipated result, while more time will be spent on this than reinstalling the OS. There is nothing difficult about OS reinstallation, but I will not cover it since this video is already long.

For this test, I intentionally reinstalled Windows to show you the entire optimization process from scratch. I installed Windows 11 Pro, Version: 21H2, Build 22000.918 - this is the latest version of Windows available at the time.

Installing all the updates and components

No matter whether your OS is old or fresh, it is important that all system updates are installed. Be sure to update Windows to the latest version. To do this, go to Settings, select Windows Update and press Check for Updates.

If there are updates available, download them and install them until you receive the “You’re up to date” notification. Even if a fairly large number of updates will queue up, its better to go through them all.

We will also need to install additional Microsoft Visual C++ and DirectX components. These are important components that are often installed with games. The Visual C++ package allows you to run programs in the exact environment they have been developed, games included. Also DirectX allows games to interact directly with video and audio hardware, thereby improving gaming performance.

Both components can be safely downloaded and installed manually from the official Microsoft website. Google “Microsoft Visual C ++”, follow the first link, download the components either for 32-bit or 64-bit systems and install it. Same with DirectX.

Drivers

Drivers are a very important component for games, and despite the fact that Windows 10 and 11 automatically installs all the necessary drivers for a gamer, these are usually bad drivers.

Be sure to install the key drivers, such as chipset and graphics drivers, you can manually download them from the manufacturer's website. I categorically do not recommend using applications like DriverPack.

In order to download the necessary drivers, for PC specifically, you must know the model of the motherboard and video card, and in the case of a laptop, you need to know the model of the laptop.

If you do not know the component model, the previously mentioned AIDA64 will come to aid. You will find the necessary information in the section “computer - summary information”.

  1. Chipset drivers

It is best to start driver installations with the chipset driver. Finding these drivers is easy, you just type a corresponding request in Google, for example “msi b450 gaming plus max” and add the word “drivers” at the end and the first link we get will most likely lead you to where you need, namely to official page of your motherboard and it doesn't matter whether you have MSI, ASUS, Asrock, gigabyte or another vendor.

In my case I get to the page with the drivers, but depending on the manufacturer, you can get to the product description page, if so - look for the “Support” or “Drivers” tab.

Select the operating system in accordance with its bit depth and proceed to download the driver for the chipset with its subsequent installation. I also advise you to download and install other drivers: audio, LAN, VGA, etc., other applications optional. They won't affect gaming performance, but they should work better than the ones that Windows gives you.

During the installation of drivers, when prompted to reboot the system, be sure to perform it. If you decide to install all the drivers at once, and then reboot, there is a chance that something will not work correctly.

If you do not have a PC, but a laptop, then the search for a chipset driver differs only in the motherboard model - you’ll have to enter the full model of your laptop and also add the word Driver at the end.

  1. Video card drivers

Video card drivers are one of the most significant factors affecting game performance. Moreover, the newer the driver, the better it is, but this rule does not always apply.

There are cases when with the release of new versions your drivers may crash, or some applications may crash as well, yet such errors are usually quickly corrected by the release of new driver versions.

There is also a myth circulating on the web that with the release of new drivers, the performance of older video cards drops. I honestly don't really believe in it, what's the point? If this is even partially true, most likely it is due to lack of driver optimization for old cards, but developers introduce such optimization sometimes too.

To determine the model of your video card, you can use AIDA64 or even easier: go to This PC, RMB, properties, device manager and expand Display adapter - the video card model will be indicated.

In your case, it will be either Nvidia or AMD, also a chance for Intel yet this will be the integrated graphics with CPU, meaning the graphics driver comes with the chipset driver. AMD can also be integrated in the processor. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to speed up much with integrated graphics, so I’ll talk about discrete graphics, that is, when a device has a separate graphics chip.

Disabling unnecessary Windows options

Firstly, we will disable all unnecessary system functions available in the general Windows settings. This guide is suitable for both Windows 11 and Windows 10 users.

The structure will be the same, the difference is only in the interface. To open the settings window, you can use the Win+X key combination and select Settings from the menu that appears, or search for the settings application through the start menu.

  1. System configuration

I am turning off the notification function, for this I open Settings - System - Notifications. I turn off all notifications, disabling this feature at all. You can customize as you like and leave what you really need, but I advise you to disable everything.

Next, switch to Focus assist, turn it off and disable all Automatic rules, go to Customize priority list and delete all applications in the list, here I remove all the checkboxes associated with people, calls and other things.

  1. Display and hardware-accelerated GPU

Another important parameter is the display setting. I am interested in the Scale parameter, the value of which should be 100%, if your value is 125-150% you will get mouse input lag. Next, go to Advanced display and check that the refresh rate is set to the maximum possible value.

Let's go back and select Graphics and review the “Hardware Acceleration” option. It is supported by nVidia since the 10th series, and for AMD Radeon cards since the RX 5000 series.

The purpose of this feature is to optimize the speed of the dedicated GPU and improve the overall gaming experience. The description says that this setting should reduce latency and improve performance. Enable this option and reboot the system.

In fact, there are cases when this parameter does not improve anything, but degrades the performance of the system. Improvements, if any, are not significant, we can say that the increase in performance is within marginal 1-3 FPS. I advise you to independently test the effect of hardware acceleration on performance in games.

If you plan to stream gaming, I’d advise you to disable this option, since applications like OBS and streaming platforms are not friendly with hardware acceleration, as a result, you will encounter video lagging during broadcast. Then below in “Custom options for apps” I am adding the games and setting High performance for them.

Apps and startup

I reckon everyone knows that the more applications running on your device, the more resources your device consumes. If you have a newly installed system, there is nothing special to do here and it is only worth configuring this after installing all launchers and software. Our task is to remove as many applications from startup as possible.

In Settings, go to the Apps tab, then Startup and disable everything superfluous, what you don’t need when starting the system, such as Epic Game Launcher, Rockstar Launcher, Steam and other unnecessary applications, such as instant messengers, etc., but do not disable applications that interact with hardware, such as OSD, Realtek, etc.

Gaming settings

Now let’s focus on the Gaming tab in the settings. If you, like me, do not use the Xbox Game Bar overlay and do not record your games using standard Windows methods, and your main priority is the maximum FPS in games, then all this should be disabled.

Turn off the Xbox Game Bar, go back, go to Captures and turn off the standard recording function. Lastly, turn on Game Mode - this will allow you to give games a priority, all notifications and updates will be suspended while the game is running, a rather useful option.

Accessibility

For weak devices, I advise you to disable system animations. To do this, go to Settings - Accessibility - Visual effects. Always Show Scrollbar is disabled by default, leave it as it is, and disable Transparency effects and animation effects. If you don't have a touchscreen, go back and go to the Mouse pointer and touch, from there disable the Touch indicator option and go back.

Text cursor indicator, magnifier, color filter are disabled by default, as it should be, go to Narrator and disable everything there too. Also check that in Speech, Keyboard, Mouse, Eye control everything is turned off.

Note that in keyboard Sticky keys, even if the checkbox is in the disabled position, the sticky keys function continues to work. To deactivate the Sticky keys function, go to the keyboard settings, click on the Sticky keys field and deactivate the options you want.

Privacy & security

The general Privacy & security settings are usually turned off by users when installing Windows, yet if you haven’t done so, it’s time to turn off all these settings that collect a bunch of information, do analysis and monitoring, although there’s no sense in this. Similarly disable Speech and Linking & Typing Personalization.

Also make sure that everything is disabled in Diagnostics & feedback, and at the very bottom of the feedback frequency, select Never and meanwhile you can also delete existing data.

In Activity history disable and delete everything, then if you do not use Vice activation, also disable it. Then in Account info and Automatic File Download disable everything as in my example. All subsequent items must be On.

As for the complete update service shutoff, you can disable its services by editing the registry or through local group policy, but doing this every time you need to update the system will take a lot of time, so no matter we like it or not, the easiest way would be to resort to a third-party software.

There are several such applications, the fastest and easiest solution is Windows Update Blocker (WUB) from Sordum. Download, run, click Disable Updates & Protect Services Settings, then apply.

A red icon means updates are disabled. I advise you to turn it on periodically and check for updates for your system. You can be sure that this application is safe and does not pose any danger to your device, as evidenced by the VirusTotal analysis.

System performance

In addition to the animations that we disabled, Windows uses various design effects: shadows, anti-aliasing, window thumbnails, etc. All of them also consume system resources, so we will disable them, but not all. Click RBM on the This PC icon and click Properties > Advanced system settings > Advanced > Performance settings. Under the "Visual Effects" tab, select "Adjust for best performance".

Personally, after applying this setting, it becomes extremely unpleasant for me to look at some text, dragging windows without content and some other things I do not like, so in the same window I’ve activated the following options:

  1. Fade or slide menus into view
  2. Show thumbnails instead of icons
  3. Show window contents while dragging
  4. Smooth edges of screen fonts
  5. Smooth-scroll list boxes

Modifying the power settings

Depending on whether you have a PC or a laptop, the next steps are as follows. This step is for laptops. Open Settings -> System and go to Power & battery. Power Mode must be set to “Best performance”. Some vendors tend to distribute a separate energy efficiency optimization configuration for their product.

Since we are already here, it would be nice to set up Screen and Sleep. There we have 2 options for charging and 2 options for battery operation. I always change this parameter because with a charger I don’t like the screen to go blank or the laptop to go to sleep. By the way, for stationary devices, this parameter could also be relevant… anyway, configure this to your preferences.

Disabling Windows protection

Windows Defender is a high-quality product that does its job well, but it also consumes quite a lot of resources, especially during analysis. I strongly advise against disabling protection, but I can put myself in the shoes of a gamer and with the low performance of his device, every frame rate counts.

The second reason for disabling Defender is the need to install software that, according to Microsoft, is potentially dangerous and the system does not allow it. I will show you how to disable protection, but you take responsibility for all the possible consequences.

You can turn off the defender for the duration of the game or for the period of installing “unwanted software”. To do this, go to Settings -> Privacy & security and click on Virus & threat protection. In the window that opens, go to Manager settings and simply disable real-time protection. This method will disable protection until you enable it, or until the device is rebooted.

Fortunately or not, it is impossible to completely deactivate Windows Defender using standard methods without installing a third-party defender. You will need to resort to a variety of sophisticated methods, but editing the registry or changing local group policies will not disable protection.

Registry tweaks

In the same link with the PowerShell files, you will find the Registry tweaks folder. It contains the Registry Tweaks.reg file, download the file, right-click on the file and click Merge. It will make some changes to your registry, let's review it all briefly.

PowerThrottling - causes the CPU to slow down so it doesn't consume too much battery power. Unfortunately, this can come with a small but noticeable performance loss.

Network Throttling - To keep the internet connection stable on your PC, Windows will sometimes throttle your network, which can reduce its speed. For online gaming, this can result in a higher ping. You can rectify that by disabling Network Throttling.

Disable sleep - everything is clear from the name here, similar to Disable hibernate.

Disabling unnecessary services

The next important point to optimize our device is to disable unnecessary system services. Most often, a large number of services are never used, while about a dozen of these services consume a fairly large amount of resources.

To disable services, press the Win+R key combination and enter the sservices.msc command. Now I will list all the services that can be disabled in my opinion, but you disable only those that you do not use, or use very rarely, and if necessary, you can enable the service.

Control Panel settings

The next tip that does not affect your game in any way is the explorer setting. I don’t know about you, but for me, when opening the File explorer, the default Quick access page is unnecessary at all - I would like to go directly to This PC.

To get this, press the Win+R key combination and execute the control command, the Control Panel will open, change View by to small icons and select File Explorer Options. In the window that appears, in the Open File Explorer to field, change from Quick access to This PC.

Also, a little lower, uncheck the “Show frequently used folders in Quick access” box, now switch to the View tab and disable the “Hide extensions for known file types” option. For me personally, File Explorer is much more convenient to use with this setting.

Now, how to disable certain Ease of Access Center options. Go back to the Control Panel and open the Ease of Access Center and remove these two checkboxes as in my case, then go to “Make the computer easier to see” and turn off all three High Contrast options and apply the settings.

Disabling file indexation

File indexing is a process where Windows scans all your drives and creates a kind of database with information about where and what files are located. When using the search function, this database is accessed and you get a quick search result.

Disabling it could improve gaming performance as well as generally optimize the speed of your device, and prolong the life of SSD and HDD drive. This action can be done either by disabling the Windows Search service, or through the disk properties.

Open This PC, right-click - Properties and uncheck “Allow files on this device to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”. Repeat it for all disks.

Disabling hardware acceleration

While playing games, many users keep browser tabs, Discord, Steam or other services open. For complex graphical tasks hardware acceleration allows us to involve both the main processor and the graphics card processor.

As a result, performance increases, and the PC is able to perform even very resource-intensive processes - this boosts the speed of applications, but loads the graphics processor, thus negatively affects the FPS in games.

Disabling CPU for gaming

If you are playing a CPU-heavy game and you have more than 6 CPU threads, I advise you to do a little experiment and disable game interactions with the first thread.

The fact is that all applications, services, etc. use this particular thread by default which causes a performance loss in the game. Launch Task Manager, I do this with Ctrl+Shift+ESC, click More details, find the game process, right-click -> go to details, right-click again -> set affinity -> disable CPU 0, and apply.

Not all games will get a performance boost, and not on every device. This is rather specific, but I am obliged to tell you about this optimization method. If this method helped you, share with us in the comments what game it was and what processor was involved.

Disable full screen optimization

I would advise you to do this. All professional players of CS:GO, Apex, Call of Duty: Warzone, PUBG and other FPS games do this. I have to warn you that on some devices the game with disabled optimization may not start at all, or there may be other issues, which I can’t predict since each case is individual.

To disable optimization, go to the folder with the game and right-click the EXE file -> Properties, in the window that appears go to the Compatibility tab and check the “Disable fullscreen optimization” option. Do this with each game if needed.

  1. Drive cleaning and temporary files

Well, the last tip - do not forget to clean the folder with temporary files. When you visit the Internet, install or remove programs, work with files, the computer collects information about your actions.

During the removal of programs and files, this does not happen completely, certain folders and files remain in the system. Consequently, their accumulation is not positive for performance..

Summary

At this point, the optimization of your device based on Windows 10 \ 11 can be considered complete, quite a lot of work has been done. I recommend you to create another backup copy of the system in order to avoid the need to reconfigure it in case something happens.

For obvious reasons, depending on the power of components, the resulting performance boost in games can be different, yet practice shows that it could increase by 10% and in some cases by more than 20%. Again, it all depends on components, drivers, the game itself, etc.

Some tips not mentioned in this guide, I would also add the need to update the BIOS to the latest version, as well as overclocking the CPU, GPU, RAM, but this is rather a topic for separate review.