NZXT PODCAST - #150 - PC Performance Tips (150th Episode Special!)

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast, we celebrate our 150th episode by reviewing some of the best PC tips our fans submitted! Onto episode 200! Tune in live every Friday at 10AM PT on twitch.tv/nzxt and send your questions to: [e-mail]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 150 at the N60 podcast, the official podcast of the NXC community. This podcast recorded live every Friday at 10 a. Pacific Saturday time on the official NXC Twitch is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike, and with me, as always, is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? How we do, baby boo. Happy to be with you on podcast episode number one, 15.

believe it or not. Can you believe it? 150. I started this. I forgot what episode I started this on. It was like maybe 70. You were on the first one. No, you started it. Yeah, yeah, but like for me hosting it.

Yeah. When you started, no, when you started hosting, it was definitely after episode 100. Because I remember episode 100 was when we had Pete Hines. And that was with Dennis. Dennis was still here. Yeah. I don't remember when you started,

but you were part. of episode number one way back in 2018 when you and griff were interning at mzht and um you know we we just thought you know there'd be a cool project to start this podcast and we didn't know how long we were going to do it and i remember you know back then i when we were doing the the research on podcast we found the statistic that said most podcasts only last six episodes so my original goal was like it we can just do seven episodes. We've already succeeded in my book, and we've done 150.

So thank you, Mike. I'm very, very proud of everything you've done with the podcast. 150 is incredible. Like, I'm looking at, like, all the SoundCloud stuff, and it's just like there's so much we've done in the past, you know, what, two years since I've pretty much taken over? Yeah, most people. listen either via SoundCloud or Spotify or Google

podcast or Apple Podcasts. Most people are not tuned in live on Twitch when we're recording this, but we've got like hundreds of thousands of people that have, or not people, hundreds of thousands of streams, I should say, because I don't know if it could be the same person streaming the same thing over and over. Maybe it's just Laurent streaming podcasts all day long. But yeah, 150 episodes, man, and we are celebrating. So if you are tuned in live right now on Twitch.tv slash nzxti like we do every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time. We are doing giveaway today.

We're going to give away three NZXT hoodies, three NZXT shirts, three NZXT lanyards, and three sets of NZXT sticker packs. And if you stay tuned until the very end of the episode, we will give you a secret word. which will give you a bunch of bonus entries into the giveaway to increase your chances of winning. And today's episode is actually going to be a really, really fun one. We're going to be talking about PC performance tips. So earlier this week, we went on Twitter, we went on Instagram, we went on Facebook, and we asked our community, what's the best tip you have for increasing your PC's performance? And before we get into those tips, Mike, I want to ask you, like, what is your

tip for increasing your PC's performance? And why is it, and why is it fixing your camera? Oh, yeah, so for those that, I don't know, my camera's just not working, so I'm just going to put the spinning giff of a seal, I think, that's like camera's not working. But I guess my biggest tip would probably be always update your drivers as soon as possible. because that honestly people kind of forget, and I forget every once in a while, but I think that's kind of one of those things

that people just kind of take for granted until it basically, everything kind of breaks. Like every time there's something wrong with a PC and someone, because for some reason, people think that I'm like the IT support person in my family, you know, because I work for a computer company. They don't realize that I'm literally a moron and I'm not anything about fixing computers.

I just, you know, I work in social media. But I do tell people like, okay, well, if you're having issues, have you restarted your PC? Because usually that will fix it. And then the second thing I tell them is, all right, are you sure everything's up to date, you know, update all your drivers? And 19 times out of 10, if you just restart, update your drivers, like your PC is going to work.

So, yeah, that's probably my tip too. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I found out that the first episode I did was hosting was episode 120. So I've done 30 episodes of this. 30 episodes. One day, one day we'll be able to do this without any technical difficulties. Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Z-A-X-T, like, podcast, they have to have some sort of technical difficulty somehow.

I think that's part of the show. But anyway, enough about us and our tips. Let's get into the community's tips, Mike. What do they think? What do they say? All right. So we have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for Facebook. Since these guys tend to have an actual decent, you know,

these guys tend to have some decent tips. Buy a new everything. It'll be faster than it was. That's a... I mean, that is actually a good tip. depending on your current situation. And I'll use myself as an example because my PC is actually really old.

You know, like I have the PC that I use I built in 2015, like eight years ago, right? And I haven't upgraded it at all. The reason I haven't upgraded it is because, you know, I primarily use that computer for surfing the internet and like, you know, replying to people on Twitter and, you know, scheduling posts

on social media and things like that. And then the types of games that I play, you know, I don't necessarily need like the newest processor, the newest graphics card, etc. So for me, like that works, right? But there has been times where I want to play like a new game,

like let's say, you know, Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 or something like that. And I haven't been able to play it. So the only way I would be able to play it is basically to buy new everything because even if I upgrade my graphics card, it's just going to throttle because my CPU is not strong enough. And if I upgrade my CPU, then my GP is not going to keep up, right? Same thing. I don't have enough RAM. I don't have enough disk space, nothing. So like for me, yeah, like that's actually a pretty good tip to increase

my performance. I would probably have to buy a whole new computer. Yeah. At a certain point, you know, sometimes it's just better instead of upgrade part by part, sometimes it's better just to do everything, you know? And just doing it part by part by part and just slowly upgrade sometimes, you know, if you have like those old, like I remember when I had my first ever PC,

it was like this pre-built power spec PC that I had no, it was, you know, block case, no vents, nothing. And then eventually I'm just like, you know, I should just upgrade the whole thing just make it easier for myself. Yeah. Sometimes that is the best tip. I just update me. I'm just kidding you, P-C. All right, what's our next? So the next tip here is from Ryan. He says, or they say, keep it clean. Dust impacts airflow. Airflow mitigates heat. Heat degrades components and potentially causes underclocking. That is a very good tip. And this is why, like, I know we meme a lot on social about, you know, it's called a desk.

top. It's not called the desk bottom. You know, put your PC on the desk. But the whole reason why putting your PC on the desk makes more sense than putting it on the floor, apart from obviously showing off your fancy hardware and looking at it

is the fact that, yeah, you're going to get way less dust than if you keep it on the floor. Especially if you know, if you're not like a neat freak like you Mike, I know you're a very neat, you're a very, like, clean person, you know?

I'm not sure you vacuum and sweep and mop every single day and all that, but not everyone does. And a lot of people not only not clean on a regular basis, they have cats and dogs and gerbils and who knows what other animals running around the floor and all those little furballs end up going inside your computer. So, yeah, keeping your computer clean. I think cleaning your PC, or at least dead. Dusting it once a month is more than enough, I think, to just keep it clean. You probably get by with, you know, cleaning it even once a year, to be honest.

But if you make it just a habit, a routine, you know, every first day of every month, I'm going to take off the panels and I'm going to get an air duster. And I'm just going to get all this dust out of here. Your computer is always going to be running smooth. you're never going to have to worry about, you know, little fur balls getting in there and things like that. So that's a very good tip. I like that tip. And for actual, like, getting rid of dust, you know, you can use those simple air canisters.

But I also saw that there's a new electric ones now that are completely reusable that you can use. So, one, better for money down the road. So, you know, years upon years, you can still use this one duster. But two, better for an environment. So if you guys need some sort of way to, you know, if you need some sort of way to, you know, clean your PC, you have an easy way to do it. What's the next tip?

All right, let's see. From Jonathan, upgrade components that are more to three years old. SSD, it's an HD, upgrade to at least 16 gigabytes of faster RAM. If this is more than 10, 5 years old, makes more sense to buy slash building a PC. but you actually talked about. The thing though about this one, the SSD versus HDD, yes, if you only have an HDD, it is 100% worth upgrade to an SSD for like, you know, for your games for Steam or something like that. However, don't get rid of it.

You can use that HDD for, you know, stuff. Like you can put, you know, parts on or pictures on it, movies on it, stuff like that. clips if you record gameplay. So don't get rid of it, just keep that. That could be your homework folder. Yeah, homework folder, okay, filled with anime and games. Yeah, like, that's actually a really good tip too, because the difference between an SSD and HDD is night and day.

And for those that don't know the difference is because the hard drive is mechanical and has a bunch of moving parts in there. So it's slower than an SSD, which is not mechanical. And it's not only faster for games, it's also faster for just turning on your PC. And if you never experience an SSD, you'll be amazed how much faster it is than a regular old hard drive. And even faster is an M.2 drive, which is similar to an SSD. in terms of performance but it's faster because there's no cables required to transfer information and that's because the m.2 is connected straight into your motherboard so it's even faster than an SSD

and nowadays i think a lot of people are just getting mdot instead of SSD the price is not that much compared to how it was when it first came out um yeah so i i like that tip too as SSD over HCT and regarding the RAM I don't know I think the RAM that's the kind of a debatable PC tip in my opinion because we're playing video games

if all you're doing is playing video games I still think you'll get by with 8 gigs 16 gigs obviously is better than 8 but I feel like 8 is still enough, in my opinion, for video games. 16 is going to be better, though. You'll be able to probably multitask a little bit more. But if you really want to go all out, you know, 32, even 64 gigs of RAM will let you not just play games,

but also maybe run OBS and have like multiple apps going on at the same time. A little debatable, I guess, depends on what you're doing with that, with that RAM. Luke Perry, not to be confused with Luke Perry, from Beverly Hills 90210 fame, says liquid cooling, and they have a picture of a hose going into a computer. I'm sure that they thought they were meaming, but that is a good PC tip, believe it or not, not necessarily spraying water on your computer, but switching from an air cooler to a liquid cooler can improve performance. The reason for that is because liquid does displays heat much more effectively than air. However, with that being said, there are some great air coolers out there that can keep up with liquid cooling.

And, you know, Naktua has, it's a good example. You know, some of their air coolers, you know, they're right up there with liquid coolers. So liquid cooling is not always going to be like significantly better. But if you're going from like a stock cooler to a liquid cooler, you'll notice the temp difference right away. Like, you know, similar to an HDD versus SSD, like your attempts are just going to drastically improve.

And with better attempts, you're, you're. computer is just going to run a lot faster, a lot smoother. Yeah, so that's actually a good tip. I like that one, too. Christopher Sapp says, don't use NZXT parts. That's a good tip, too. How rude, Christopher. Mike, if you're speaking, I can't hear you.

Whoops, sorry, I've already about that. Actually, you know, Mike. That's the thing that I have a little mad about, because, like, if you actually look at our stuff, we actually are caring about, like, airflow and stuff. I look at that all airflow right here. You know, if you look at the 8-7, we also have an 8-7 flow as well, you know, with the perforated. And then the H-9, which is probably one of the coolest cases I've seen.

And there's literally H-9 flow with literally the whole back panel and top panel are completely perforated. So still not enough airflow, Mike. We need more airfield. You know what, at that point? I think we just got to get rid of all the panels, you know, just make. a full skeleton at that point. That's how much more airful they want. Yeah.

Right. So let's see. I'm going to go with this one from Nicholas. If you have a portable heater, if you have a portable heater, put as close as possible to intake fans. Just appreciate your processor GPU to increase FPS. Stay tuned for more tips

from one of the most average casual gamers around. I don't know about this. Yeah. Oh, these things. Yeah. Like, you know what? They're meming for sure, but that brings up a good point, you know, like, the environment of where your PC is does impact performance. So, you know, if you live in a part of the world that's hot, right?

and you decided, you know, have a heater next to your PC or whatever. And if your room is hot, you know, your hardware is not going to get cooler. You know, it's going to get hotter because of that. So you definitely want to do the opposite of what Nicholas is recommending. You know, do not put a portable heater in front of your intake fans because then it's just going to suck warm air into your PC. Yeah. And some people live in really cold parts of the world. And sometimes I'll see their temps online.

and it's actually like really interesting how how the environment impacts your attempts it's not just like the you know the coolers and the fans and whatnot inside your PC like the room that your PC in does impact you know the temps and so yeah do the opposite of nicholas yeah honestly yeah i agree like if you have your thing in you know a corner of the room with no ventilation yeah your PC's going to be much harder like right now i'm in my new apartment And usually my temps at my old apartment because I was right by the window, the temps were so cold. Like I was like at 28, 29 degrees, even though I have like an I-9 and a 40-90. Like my temps were so cold. But now, since I've had a quarter with no ventilation, I'm around 3840, just because I'm not, you know, next to a window glass and cold air in. McCoyah says the more RGP's you have the more frames you get that is technically true

but not a not that great of a PC tip I guess Samuel says line in videos pocketearily I don't think you need to do that like I said I personally have not upgraded my PC for eight years so Obviously, if you get a new GPU every single year, you'll probably see like an increase in your performance, but it's not something you need to do every year necessarily.

Well, Matthew has a good tip. You want to read that one? Yeah. Enable X&P. Most people also have it set. Make sure you're in dual channel RAM configuration. Yeah, so for the first one, enable XMP. For those that don't know, basically your RAM will run at a stock speed.

I actually don't know the specifics behind it, but basically, if you have a 3,600 megahertz RAM, it will run at like 34 or something, something. So what you do have to do is you have to go into your motherboard bios. Basically, just restart your PC, click delete a bunch of times, and then basically you'll go into the motherboard bios. And all you have to do is just enable XMP, which is enabling your RAM to run at its stock speed, or at its real speed. And then from there, you will get literally so much more RAM usage that you can use.

and it's just literally turning on a simple setting. Oh, and then for the dual channel RAM, dual channel RAM configuration, you know, what is it? One stick of a 16 gigabyte runs slower than a 2x8, right? Pretty sure. Yeah. They bring up a good point too saying, like, make sure that you're in dual channel RAM configuration.

And we've talked about this before on the podcast is, you know, look at that motherboard manual, make sure that the RAM is in the right RAM slot because if it's not, you know, maybe only one of them is working. So you could have two sticks of RAM that are connected to your motherboard. But if one of them is in the wrong slot,

you know, you're only using one of those sticks. Same thing with your GPU. You know, sometimes people will share a picture of their PC online and, you know, they have their graphics card on the very bottom slot of the motherboard. And depending on the motherboard, you know,

you're going to get better performance if you put it on the topmost slot. And that all goes back to just, you know, looking at the motherboard manual, making sure everything is connected where it needs to be, so you can ensure maximum performance. Looks like the rest of these tips

might be little Mimi, more RGB, money will fix your problems. I don't know. Do you want to check what people are saying in Instagram and Twitter Yeah, I'm just like Take you a look at these Yeah, let's go

Let's go ahead to switch over to Instagram Go Perce Reelves Paulini in the chat is saying Oh no, my per PC I don't do most of these tips

Well, now you know Pauline I do these Yeah Stream labs closing Chrome tabs Because you're not reading that article For three weeks ago Stop pretending like you will Oh, God, I had a friend in college that would basically never delete, like literally never delete, like their tabs.

They would, I think there's a time where under Mac they had, oh God, close to maybe like 50 to 70 tabs open in one browser. And they only used one browser. They didn't use like multiple screens or anything like that. or the different desktops literally like 70 tabs open like I had no idea how to do. Yeah, then that will you know

decrease your PC's performance and to be completely honest I feel like Chrome yes there was a time where Chrome was a memory hog and just using Chrome in general like if you would open up your task manager you would see it sucking up a bunch of resources

nowadays not so much, honestly, like it's very well optimized. It's not going to do a lot of damage. But if you do have a million tabs open, you're going to notice it. And that's one of that, like, I'm going give a little plug here to Opera GX. That's one of the features I like about Opera GX

is they have this tab killer where you can just, you know, with the one click, just get rid of all those, like unused tabs and free ups and resources. And they also have like a real-uprookers and resources. And they also have like a RAM limiter on their browser so you can just tell the browser i don't want this thing to go over like one giga ram let's say and it's not going to do it so yeah you're making sure that your web browser is you know not wasting resources that will improve performance so pretty good tip

yeah and uh i'm showing off i have 64 gigawatts of memory y'all and i i just actually downloaded opera gx it's right here in my little cornered down here. This is how much, this is how much Chrome is using. And I only have like three browsers open and is using up 4,000 megabytes of my memory. And I look at the next one, which is OBS, which is at 800,

which is streaming this entire thing. Like, that's insane. Uh, well. PNW build two PCs. Go on BNW. You know, that, that, that, actually would improve your performance if you need it, you know. Like maybe you're a good example, Mike, because you're running this whole podcast, right?

Like, it might be better and easier and get better performance if you had a two PC setup. Just, you know, but I guess it also depends on like your build, right? Like if you have 64 gigs of RAM, like you probably don't have to worry about it. but if you had like a less powerful PC, maybe having two medium powerful PC side by side might be better than having one week one trying to do two things at once. It would be twice as fast. Harji says hard tube water cooling and then inject 250 milligrams of testosterone,

250 milligrams of equipoise, 100 milligrams of Adnavar per week. for about 20 weeks before draining your loop and refilling. The highest FPS you'll ever see in any Ultra competing AAA title. I don't know what any of those things are, so I wouldn't recommend it. But I will say the hardline water cooling, that will definitely improve their temps.

However, it's not an easy thing to do. I don't recommend you try it unless you know what you're doing. It also requires a lot of maintenance because you're going to have to keep a really close eye on your temps and water levels and all that stuff. You're going to have to drain the water and refill it and all this. So there's like a lot of maintenance involved with a custom loop. All in one water cooler, much easier. You just connect it. have to refill anything, just set it and forget it.

And you're going to get not the same performance, but very close. And like I said earlier, water does displays heat better than air. So liquid cooling is a good performance tip. I like this one for Peter, overclock. So you don't necessarily need to overclock your stuff. However, one thing that I will say for those that have a PC that's relatively older is undervolting. Undervolting is actually very, very helpful

down the road. Basically, it's, you know, there is a, oh God, I can't remember to write a guide, but I use it all the time. Basically, there's a certain voltage your GPU can run, and that will make your temperature

at a certain range. Sometimes you can give it a little less voltage, just a slightly less voltage on it. It will still run the same. Sometimes it even runs better, but the temperature will be different. There's a way to test it. I forgot the exact way to doing it, but it is one of those things that I highly recommend for people to have older GPUs. Go ahead and undervolt your GPU. It'll help a lot in the process. And I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to counter that tip with underclocking. Because, yeah, like a lot of times, you know, you don't necessarily need to overclock to get better performance. Even not using everything. We'll get

you better performance depending on what you're doing. And to go back a little bit real quick to the water cooling, because we do have a question here from B Rabbit Girl in the chat, they say, how frequently should an AIO liquid cooler like the N60 Cracken be replaced? And the answer is never. You're never supposed to replace that liquid is designed to last a really long time. Our crackings have a six-year warranty. so they'll probably last you longer than six years

but the warranty is six years so you should never people like you know take that apart and try to stop the fluid because it will it will break let's see overclock oh this one's actually a really good one I actually really like this one uh

stops stop startup tasks or apps and task management I do it all the time whenever I load up a game I hit control, delete, and I just close everything. Yeah,

I turned that off for most of my stuff, basically for a lot of things of, you know, Spotify turning on immediately at startup, Google turning it on and stuff. It slows turning it on all the time. And honestly, if you need to use it,

click it. Don't let the PC do it yourself. Yeah. There's some stuff, though, that you do want to start up automatically. like, you know, if you're using an antivirus, for example, I think you might want to have that start right away because, you know, it's safe, a cautionary measure.

But yeah, you don't necessarily need Steam and Spotify and Discord and Skype and, you know, whatever other apps you have on your PC loading at the same time. It's going to not only use up resources, it's just going to take forever to load when you're trying to do something. So that's a good tip. I just quote down a little bit, Mike.

We'll see what else we got on this list. Go outside. I think this one right here from endless. Best for Performance Power Setting. Best for Performance Power Setting. Yeah. Basically, there's a setting in your actual power. If you actually go to your thing, go to your power.

There's a thing right here for Best for Performance. balance or efficiency. It depends on which one you want. However, I think performance is pretty decent. Basically, you know, it depends on how much power you need. Or if you want less power, you know, making sure that your PCs are draining everything for your energy bill. But if you want best performance out of everything, yes, definitely change it because that means you're getting a lot more a lot more power into your PC and then letting it power everything.

So he does pretty much it for Instagram. You go to Twitter? Let's do it. All right, this is where we get some of the interesting ones. All right, from Opera GX. Delete Chrome. Honestly, yes. I have, I have Opera right here, you know, bottom left.

I have it right here. I just need to actually transfer all my files over and figure out what I need, you know? Honestly, I need to get to that point. It is a good browser. I do like it. Okay. Official PCMR says more RGB, but it has to be red for more FPS. Blue is for cool temp, screen for power savings,

cool unicorn RGB for a mix of all, but neither. Yeah, I think that's a good tip. Just put more RGB in there. Cats? Yeah, from Smurf cat, they say cats. More RGB, more power, install and more. Linux. Actually, I don't

only if you need to. Say, go as high as your budget allows from Jason. I've had seven years out of my I-7-4770 just started to overclock, which is tip to overspec the cooler to allow for later overclocking.

I actually kind of like this tip. I actually kind of like this one a lot. It's like you said. go ahead oh it was just like you said that you see this lasts a while you don't need to upgrade every year unlike some how some people do well last a while

and you know if if you you know have the money to to spend a little more and something a little bit better it'll last you longer for sure so I mean the fact that they've had seven years with their CPU

that's great you know and And they just started to overclock, which is tip two. Overspecking the cooler to allow for later overclocking. Yeah. So that's actually another good tip too. If you get a cooler that's a little overspec for your CPU, it will allow you to overclock in the future.

Smart tip, Jason. Jason Walker. Thank you. That's a good one. Take it out to eat some fancy dinner. Shout with gift. Ooh, Shottie King. Shottie King has a good one.

Go for it. good airflow, low temps, ultimate performance mode, NVIDIA settings or AMD settings for best performance. Yeah. Airflow is a controversial one because people, like, for whatever reason, they always, they feel like you need to have the world's best airflow in your PC, which is not true. Like you don't need to have the world's best airflow.

Like there's a, you know, there's a point where like you have enough basically. And, you know, some of you might know, like NZT, you know, we've gotten a lot of flack in the past because, you know, people look at our cases and it looks like there's no airflow going in. But in reality, no, there is air flow going in there. You just don't see it because the front of the case is not curving holes or whatever, right? well, what do you think happened when we started making cases that were covered in holes? People still wanted more airflow because, you know, it's not enough for them still. And because they want like, you know, the maximum airflow. Like we came out with cases that have perforated panels on the front, the top, the back,

and people will still say things like, you know, just take off the panels for your more airflow. I'm like, yeah, you could do that, but you don't need to have all that airflow. You just need enough to get in there and cool your PC for your low temps or whatever. And obviously, if you have more airflow, it is going to be better. But there's a point where like enough is enough in my opinion. And I think in the case of a computer, you know, you really, you just really need to like make sure that nothing is obstructing the flow of air going inside the case, pulling what's inside of the case, and then dispersing that air outside of the case, right? And there's many different ways

you can do that. So one way you can do that is, yeah, you get an airflow optimized case that have, you know, holes in the front, hold in the top, hold in the rear, whatever. And you don't stuff the case with 25 funcop pops. You don't put a cat bed on top of your, on top of your case and things like that. All that stuff is going to help it. But I do want to make it clear, like you don't need to like remove every single panel

from your case in order to use it. Because I do see a lot of people, you know, going to the extremes when it comes to airflow. What is the From Casey Narni What is the optimal count Funko pops I would say one

To be honest Using one one good Funko Yeah One good Funko for your setterpiece I want Yeah like I've seen computers Where there's like You know

10 15 20 Funko pops inside It looks cool You know But that stuff is Having some sort of impact on the airflow and the temps, believe it or not. It might not be super noticeable, but it's doing something.

You know, like everything that you put in there is like restricting airflow that should, you know, be flowing through the case or whatever. And the more stuff you put in there, you know, the less that's going to happen. I actually want to go through some of the chat questions from absolute logic. Longest I've gone with that upgrading is six years. Not sure if I could wait longer. Six years is very good. If you make it past like four or five years, I say you're doing really well with your PC.

And then along with that, there's a tradeoff with increased dust with increased airflow. Yes, people think they need all the airfoil but never cleaned their PC. Then honestly, you're actually making a worse for your PC in the long run because you're just having dust stockpile on your PC. So do it right, clean your PC more. And then from Cosmo. are nzzyxie pre-builds good for phallant and streaming at the same time with top tier quality and performance like consistent 240 or 300 fps at least if yes then which one uh philinix i think just actually um answered what i was after to say was it i always do a it depends all the time um like what in flinix also says that right what in uh what resolution are you playing at uh what operating system uh uh other things you want to run any configuration um for for my advice valerent is an extremely and i mean a very extremely easy game to run you can run it on macbooks like that's how that's how easy that's how

optimize uh riot is with their uh with their games uh for 2 4300 fps i mean are you are you trying to run at complete max settings are you trying to do um you know i try to do like stretch resolution at a lower resolution like what it depends on what you're doing what you're going to do um but usually a player one or player two should be fine because valourine is a pretty easy uh valance pretty easy I do want to recommend that CosmoFPS 13 listened to last week's episode of the NGXT podcast where we go over all our new pre-built PCs and we give

FPS and resolution numbers for every single PC in the series and yeah like Mike said our pre-bilt can handle it it is possible to play answering at the same time and the player two or player two Prime will probably be your best bet for doing that. But listen to last week's episode.

There's a lot of good info on that one. 100%. Yeah. Where's some other tips here? Let's see. Oh, I like this one. Meteor says money. No, no, no.

Or Michael. Nukestech.com. Invest in good hardware. There's usually no quote-unquote tip for increasing PC performance. What hardware you have dictates, what performance. what performance you'll get. Yeah, I mean, you definitely don't want to give, I guess, when it comes to computer hardware.

Like, I mean, it depends on really what it is. Like, you know, if you really care about performance, you know, you should definitely not get like, you know, all generations of motherboards and things like that because, yeah, you're going to notice it for sure. And unfortunately, yeah, it's not cheap sometimes to build something that you want. But in the long run, you know, it will pay off. And it'll be a lot better than if you decide to, you know what?

I'm just going to get, you know, a really old motherboard and old graphic cardinaled CPU. And I'm going to try to play GTA6 when it comes out. Like, you're probably going to have some issues. See. I sure it has a good one. Whatcha? Blifford says zip tie fans all over your PC everywhere. Zip tie an extra one in the CPU, zip tie more on your GPU, more on the fans that are already screwed in.

Fans everywhere. Noise issue. Wear headphones. It's fine. He's joking or they're joking, but I do think they said the keyword that said out to me, which was zip ties. And to me that, I just correlate that with cable management. you know, you want to make sure that your PCs cables are nice and tidy, because believe it or not, that does help a little bit with performance. If you have a rat's nest under your PSU shroud, you know, that just means that the air that's flowing through there is traveling through that rat's nest, right?

And you want to eliminate as much friction as possible when it comes to that stuff. So if you have everything zip-tied, nice and tidy, it's going to make the air flow better through your PC, you're going to get better temps, all that stuff. From Dougie Fresh. Cambo management is for chumps. What are you talking about, Ivan? We don't cable management here.

That's true, but you'll still get better for further. Ooh, Saratra Zilla actually has a pretty good one. Ziptize or Velcro? Well, if you have an NZEXXXR, case, it comes with Velcro their apps already on the cable management channel, so I'll save Velcro. However, you can always get

zip ties and use them somewhere, I think, in your case. Yeah, I'd say if you are planning on moving a lot and you need to like swap cables out, Velcro, because then you can, you know, untie without having to

break the zip ties. But if you're pretty much staying in that place for you know, a long, long time barely going to be moving to zip times because it's smaller and looks kind of cleaner. It's easier to like manage to because it's so thin, you can't even see it. Oh,

this one are here. This one I actually saw I think Valcray had this exact thing, who we used to sponsor. She literally did understand the difference between a 60 hertz monitor and a 144 hertz monitor guys go to your display settings literally go here and change the physical refresh rate of your things

please please do it because a lot of people here don't realize you're actually supposed to change it and that just causes so many issues down the row because you're not utilizing your monitor. So please, please update your monitor to its actual refresh rate in order for it to work. Yeah. Don't be like Mike and have it set to like 30 hertz and plug your monitor into your motherboard. Motherboard. I've done that before. And then it's just like, wow, this is not look good. And then you just have to go, no, you need a. Oh, that's also, I guess, another tip. Plug your HD value display. into your graphics card, not your motherboard. Common mistake. Common mistake.

Happens all the time. Let's do a couple more tips here. Take a PC off the floor clean the dust filter? What do you think about that? What does it take your PC off the floor and clean the dust filter? Yeah, I mean, that was like one of the first tips we gave on the episode where, you know, we're talking about why your PC is going to be cleaner if you have it on the desktop. versus on the bottom.

And yeah, like, I know not everyone has enough death space to do so, but you will definitely see better performance in the long run if you keep your PC clean. And you'll get,

you'll be able to keep it cleaner if you do not have it on the floor. Who, Oscar has a good one. Oscar says more and faster RAM goes a long way, whether you're gaming or working. Sure, if you have a potato CPU, it won't do, any miracles, but RAM is something you can never have too much of.

Well, I don't agree with the last part, because I do think there is definitely a limit to how much RAM you're actually going to use and need. But yeah, like, let's say, I'll just use an example here, like on my PC because I have a really old and sad PC, even though I work at a computer company. So I have eight, no, I have 16 gigs of RAM on my PC. and if I just wanted to use my PC for, you know, gaming and streaming and content creation, you know, I'm going to definitely run into issues.

And even if I upgrade my CPU and my GPU, even though I'll see better performance to a certain extent on what I'm doing, 16 giglar RAM might not be enough to, keep up with my multitasking and running all the different programs I need to run in order to do what I want to do. So doubling that to 32 gigs, even 64 gigs, I will see a major, major improvement. After that, I mean, after 64 gigs, I really, unless you're, I guess, running a render farm or something like that, I don't really see where anyone would need more than that. Maybe if you're

like, I don't know, like an audio producer or something like that. And you're, you know, we have like a hundred different instruments going on at the same time. Maybe you'll, you'll be more than that. But for the most part, I feel like, you know, 64 gigs of RAM is more than enough from 99% of the people out there. I don't think anyone ever has to go more than that. Um, I, there's some questions at chat, actually, uh, I kind of want to go over.

Uh, let's see. Uh, oh, from Cosmo. I really like the Crackenzie cooler and that digital look it has. Yeah, got any pre-bolts with those. I also look at the Pre-Bolt 3 Prime. Uh, the pre-bilt 3 Prime doesn't have a Crackin Z yet. We're still waiting on more in stock. Um, the only way they can get it is probably from a custom PC right now, but I think those are still

out of stock. So just wait for them to come in stock. to wait for that. From... The Arabic girl has a good one. Yeah, is there an advice method for cleaning a cracking device? So, I don't know if this is like

an official method. But what I would recommend is, you know, if you want to clean it, I would take it off my case. I would remove the fans. I would get like an air duster, clean the fans.

get the duster through the grill on the radiator. I would take the pump off the CPU. I would clean the old paste from the pump head, apply new thermal paste, put everything back together. You might not see any sort of performance increase in doing that, but your cracking will be cleaner. you know apart from I don't know how often I would recommend doing that though

what do you think Mike? Yeah I mean there's not much like there's not really much maintenance you really have to do like you don't have to replace the fluid or anything like that you don't have to pop it open you don't have to change the thing really dusting the fans

cleaning it and then like you said if you are noticing your CPU temps are getting high pick out the CPC and reapply thermal pace. You know, you don't need a lot. You know, you can just do like a small piece size, them out. And then boom, done.

That's going to be, that's going to do you a long, that's going to get you through a lot of years, just doing that. Same. Seeing the fans where they're dusty and check the thermal pace when things get warm. Yep. That's basically it. Air cooler, or sorry, water coolers are so easy to take care of because you just let it do its thing. That's literally it. Oh, awesome.

Yeah. I'm glad that you got some de thorough pace. That'll help you out in a long run. From Apsons Lodge, some people do have ceiling-hung pieces, though. This is what I looked up. The airflow on this. You should show the picture we posted yesterday of that PC that was at the very top. Oh, yeah, yeah, on our Instagram.

Yeah, so someone on the battle station, in subreddit, you know, posted the setup, which is a really nice setup. Like, I'm not trashing the setup at all, but I just thought it was, you know, interesting slash funny because the PC is at the very, like literally like touching the ceiling, basically, and just blocking all sorts of air from going in or out of the PC. And then obviously, like, the people in the comments were asking, like, why did you do that? You know, and like their reasoning was because they wanted their setup to be symmetrical, you know, so they have, like, it's like perfectly balanced.

You know, he has, or they have one speaker on each side, one picture on each side, the monitors are even, whatever, but yeah, there's definitely not the best place to have your PC. Apart from the airflow being restricted, you know, like, it's going to be hard for air to get in and out of that case because it's so close to the wall on the ceiling. It's also pretty impossible to turn on and off. I don't know how this person

is going to turn their PC on if they decided to shut down. They're going to have to get a ladder and clump there to turn it on. And then lastly, I don't know if this thing is secured or not, but it also looks very dangerous. You know, we live, or I live here

in California, and it's earthquake country here. and I imagine if there was an earthquake and my PC was above my head like that, there is a big chance that could fall on top of me and it's not a good idea. So, yeah, like I said, I'm not shaming this setup. It's a beautiful setup, but definitely not the ideal location for a computer, in my opinion. So scary. It's scary, right?

Like Imagine this thing Falling is just Smashing everything I am curious though To see how they turn it off and on Like because I have seen some Some people that like they

They like They rig these physical buttons on their desk Like they push a button on their desk And it turns their PC on and off I wonder if they did something like that Yeah it's a thing Basically it's like a little It connects to F panel

Basically, it's like a long cable, and then there's like a little button here to click, and then bam. Yeah. Turns it on. It's crazy. I am also curious what temps they're getting. Yeah.

So apart from the airflow being restricted, right, going in and out, the other thing about this is that heat rises. So it's going to be much. much harder up there than it is on the floor or if it's on your desk. So it's almost like a perfect trifecta of, you know, blocking the air. So I am curious what their attempts are in that case. I like, I like what Hyde even said. Dude, my PC crashed would hit different.

Cashed on my head. Dude, that's such a, such a scary thing. I want imagine Imagine you have to like like hook something up to it too Not just turn it on and off Like what do you want to plug in your headphones Oh my God

Yeah you have to get like a stepstool In order to like plug in something here Or on the controller or something Yeah It looks cool Don't get me wrong Just I'm worried How do you turn on though?

Yeah I don't know know. I love to look, but practical. I'm a little scared about. Mike, we're coming to the end. Do you want to give the secret word in the announcements to everyone? Yeah, let's go ahead and go for let's go ahead and do our

last little bit. So thank you guys. Just going for an announcement real quick. Like we talked about, we have our new player PC pre-boats at nzc.com. We have the player one, two, and three PCs available, each with a prime version with a upgraded part. You guys can't, if you, basically, each PC is made for a certain player. So if you fit that specific player, go ahead and that PC is basically made for you. Check it out nz60.com or you can do a hash or exclamation point player PCs in the chat

and you can basically get it from there. We also have a bunch of new products coming out. We have, oh, player PC, sorry, player PC, my bad. We have a bunch of new products in our lineup, including some cases, some coolers, fans, monitors, thermopaste, everything. Check them out nc.com. And if it is out of stock,

please sign up for our newsletter on the website to stay in the loop. And then for those that are here, thank you guys for joining us for this, because, you know, we want to, this is the 150th episode. This is my 30th episode for, you know, hosting the NCT podcast.

And as a thank you for that, if you guys need an exclamation point giveaway, obviously there is a, we are doing a very special giveaway for our 150th. We're pulling three different winners for three different prizes. for three different prizes. So nine winners total.

We're doing three hoodies, three t-shirts, and three stickers and lanyards. Basically, from here, let me go ahead and pull out the secret code. For those that are here, basically for the entries, most entries around 10, 15, 20, you know, entries, the secret code is 500 extra entries. entries.

This is our thank you for those that say, you know, that's our here listening live. So thank you guys so much for that. So let me go ahead and type in the code. The code is onto 200. O-N-T-O-200. That is the code. This is our way saying thank you guys for joining us on the N-S-C podcast. You know, it's just thank you guys so much for everything.

And hopefully we'll get another 50 episodes. So hopefully next year we'll get another thing. So thank you guys for joining us. And remember, tune in live every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NCC Twitch. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Please leave us a positive review if you likely hear and if you didn't. Got any questions for us.

Send an email to podcast at nzc.com or tag at NZC on social media platforms. See you guys. See you guys next time. Happy St. Patrick's Day. stay safe and thank you guys so much and hopefully we'll get to 200 soon bye everyone bye