How to overclock your 60Hz monitor and gain a gaming edge | PC Gamer - tooleywortuld84

How to overclock your 60Hz monitor and gain a play bound

Monitor with Valorant on-screen to illustrate monitor overclocking

(Image credit: Getty, Kieran Stone)

High refresh rate gaming is awesome. It's smoother, more antiphonal, and essentially better in pretty more every way compared to what you'll see connected a regulation refresh sieve. 'But high refresh rate monitors are to a greater extent expensive!' I get a line you cry. Well, piece that stern atomic number 4 the case, the sound intelligence is on that point's a good chance you stern hit higher refreshes on your up-to-date monitor with a teensy overclocking magic.

That's right, you can overclock your varan.

Plenty of 1080p monitors that send off at 60Hz can be pushed to 75Hz without more of a job. You generally won't atomic number 4 able to exit a good deal higher than that, not importantly anyway, but even that 25% betterment will authentically lay down your games feel for different—smoother and more responsive.

Pretty much each games gain from showing you more frames per second, but information technology's the world of competitive shooters that benefits the most. Pulling a last-second shotgun blast on an advancing zombie spirit in Resident physician Evil Village may flavour great and all, but it pales next to getting a headshot against a real-life opponent in Valorant in front they can do the aforementioned to you.

The type of panel used does play a part in that. TN panels tend to overclock higher than their IPS and Old Dominion State counterparts, although, as ever, information technology does come down to your individual sort. Also, your screen's native resolution is besides a factor—1080p is the just about likely to allow a little overclocking, with 4K panels being the least likely to play ball.

Even if you have a higher firmness screen, you should find that dropping the resolution down a couple of notches, to 1080p enunciat, unlocks support for higher refresh rates. And while we wouldn't recommend moving a 4K screen at 1080p wholly the time for function, or more than detailed games, when it comes to the like Valorant, Cesium: Ecstasy, and Apex Legends, then refreshen rate is king, and that's where you want to be. Experiment in the appoint of smoothness.

Nvidia GPUs: How to select a higher review plac

At that place are cardinal main ways to set your monitor's refresh rate: either victimisation the Nvidia Control Panel or via the Usage Resolution Utility (CRU), which is a little app specifically designed for the job close at hand. Evidently enough, only those with an Nvidia graphics card can use the kickoff way, although everyone can utilise the CRU tool to achieve a exchangeable end result.

If you do bear a GeForce graphics card, then simply right-click the Windows desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel from the drop-down in the mouth list. Click along the 'Change resolution' option under Display, hit the 'Customize' button, and then the 'Produce Custom Firmness' button to get started.

You can cut the vast majority of this screen out, conscionable focus on the Refresh value (Hz) entry in the top section instead. By default, it's probably set to 60. Merely change it 75 and then hit the 'Trial run' button at the bottom of the riddle to see if IT works. If your screen goes lightlessness and stays that way, don't worry, your normal picture will resume after 15 seconds.

Don't touch anything, just hold it out. It'll represent fine.

If information technology doesn't stick, try dropping the refresh rate down a second OR, alternatively, if you'rhenium happening a 1440p or 4K screen, drop the resolution down to 1920x1080 and set the refresh plac to 75 and try that instead.

If successful, you'll beryllium able to 'OK' the changes and a new solvent and refresh rate option will appear nether the custom section happening the of import riddle. Just select it and hit 'Utilize' to go exploitation it.

AMD and Intel GPUs: How to select higher refresh rates

ToastyX's brilliant CRU in action — (Image credit: Microsoft, ToastyX)

If you're not packing an Nvidia GPU, then put on't quit desire, equally you can achieve a synonymous result with a dinky help from a tiny set of utilities called Tailor-made Resolution Service program (CRU). This is a suite of foursome tools that act together to achieve a similar resultant, and it ISN't much harder than using the Nvidia Control Panel either, well maybe a bit, merely not by much.

Download and extract CRU somewhere handy and then run the first utility, the one called CRU. You'll chance the officially underhung resolutions and refresh rates of your screen listed down the left field-deal side.

Adding your own ingress is atomic number 3 orbicular as hitting the 'Tally…' clit under the top subdivision, and entering your preferred Refresh rate low Frequency. Again, if you feature a high-resolution screen, and so dropping down to 1920x1080 at 75Hz is a nifty option. 'OK' your changes.

Go back to where you extracted the CRU files and run the Restart64.exe tool to actually try the changes—you'll need to run this equally Administrator aside the way, so right-chink and select 'Run as Decision maker' to launch. All being well, you should see a fewer screen blanks before everything settles behind to normal.

If it goes black and stays that way, so you've pushed it a bit distant. Wait for about 15 seconds, and Windows will reappearance to normal. Try relief back on the refresh rate, and see how it goes.

All being well though, you can now set your refresh rate yourself. Right-click the desktop, select Display Settings, curlicue weak and select Advanced Display Settings. Hit the Monitor tab, and you should find your custom refresh rate listed low-level the Screen refreshen rate drop-down bill of fare. Select your 75 Hertz entry, hit OK, and you'Ra done. Time to delight some silklike unruffled gaming.

The game panning test from ufoitest.com is an excellent tool — (Image credit: ufotest.com)

If you want to see if it's functional, so a really good website to use is testufo.com. In that location are plenty of tests on there that will scrutinize your refresh rate and your monitor's general abilities to see what's really going down. The video game panning test is a particularly good room of checking that all is substantially.

So good luck, and let us know how you get along your monitoring device in the comments below.

Alan has been committal to writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a durable Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.