How to improve your gaming PC to make games better

Stuttering. Freezing. Lagging. Crashes. Outdated graphics. All of them can ruin a good game. And if your gaming PC isn’t powerful enough, you’re bound to run into a few of these when you’re trying to play the biggest and best titles.

That’s where new components come in. To stay up to date with all the big leaps forward in gaming, you’ll need to upgrade your graphics card, CPU, RAM, SSD and more. And if you’re really serious – and want everything to look and run as well as possible – you’ll need to do it every few years.

So, with our handy suggestions, hopefully your rig will be running smoother and faster in absolutely no time…

How to improve PC performance for gaming

When it comes to your gaming PC, performance is a huge part of it. And if it can’t keep up with the latest adventures, you’re not going to be in for a good time. So, here are a few fairly simple ways you can beef up your PC and make it a real game changer…

Upgrade your CPU

The CPU (central processing unit) is kind of like the brain of your PC. With a faster gaming CPU, it’ll calculate all the techy stuff way quicker – making your gameplay nice and smooth. And there’ll be absolutely zero lag in sight. Which is super important, especially online where any slowdown is the difference between life and death!

Plus, it’ll make those loading times fly by too. Meaning you’ll spend less time staring at a boring loading screen, and more time actually playing games.

We’d go for the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. It’s future proofed, with support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0. Which basically means that you’re ready for all your next component upgrades further down the line, that you can build in around this chip. Nice.

Upgrade your graphics card

Graphics have come a long way in a fairly short space of time, and they’ll only get better. Devs keep on pushing the boundaries with every release – so you need a graphics card (GPU) that can handle those shiny new visuals. Especially if yours are looking choppy or pixelated.

And if you want to take advantage of the latest graphics tech like ray tracing, getting a GPU like the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 is a real no brainer. It’s got dedicated cores especially for it, so your games will look extra realistic. Light and shadow will react just like it does in real life, giving environments, characters and objects a lifelike boost. If immersion is your bag, definitely get yourself one of these!

Upgrade your RAM

Most games nowadays have a ton going on behind the scenes. But with more RAM packed into your PC, it’ll be able to handle loads of these processes at once.

If your games keep stuttering – or completely crashing – upgrade your RAM. Look out for some with a higher capacity and faster speeds for the best possible performance.

The Corsair Vengeance Pro is a great shout on both counts. With 32GB of memory (clocked at a speedy 3600 MHz), you’ll have plenty of power under the hood. And that’ll make running games like Red Dead 2 and Elden Ring at high framerates a walk in the park.

Upgrade your SSD

By fitting a new SSD, your PC will fire up even faster, and you can jump into your favourite games almost instantly. And that massive 120GB game download file won’t slow you down either. Installs are lightning quick (as long as your internet is up to scratch too), so even those hefty open world epics will be ready to go ASAP. The same goes for those post-launch patches as well.

Get yourself the Samsung 990 Pro M.2. Its packed with 2TB of storage to play with in all. Which is more than enough space for your game library. Because of that, you won’t need to constantly delete and reinstall games to free up some extra room. And as we all know, that can be a right pain. Especially when you can’t decide what to temporarily get rid of!

Upgrade your case

You’ll want to think about this one first. Make sure it’s actually big enough to fit all your components inside. If not, it’s going to be a very tight squeeze in there.

And while it’s not going to directly impact the performance, upgrading your PC case can help to improve the airflow, which’ll stop your components from overheating. The Corsair 4000D has a nifty high-airflow panel that steers cool air to the hottest parts of the PC. That way, all your parts can chill out and perform properly, even when you’re whacking every setting up to ultra.

With plenty of extra room, you can always add more fans or a liquid cooling system further down the line too.

And let’s be honest – plenty of cases like this just look plain cool. So, it’s always worth swapping to a new one if you’re getting bored of your old look.

Is it time to upgrade your gaming PC?

Not sure if you actually need to splash out on some new components? Here’s a few signs that you might want to take your PC to the next level…

• Lagging behind – Is your game taking absolutely ages to load? If you’re sat there for minutes at a time watching that loading bar crawl across the screen, your PC needs some extra oomph. And if your character keeps freezing right in the middle of the action, that’s a sure sign too!
• Naff looking graphics – If the game’s already looking outdated, but it’s only just come out, grabbing a better graphics card should probably be on the cards…
• Space invader – Bolting in a new hard drive or an SSD will give you plenty of room for all your games, mods, and gameplay clips if you’re running out of space.
• Speed freak – When your PC starts moving at a snails pace and everyone else is zipping through levels, upgrading your CPU and/or RAM will help you to keep up.
• Tech envy – Seen your mate’s brand-new setup and wish yours was just as good? Treat yourself with some hardware that’ll make them jealous of your rig instead.

Source: CURRYS