How to set up a new Gaming PC – BIOS Update, XMP, HDD/SSD Initialisation
|Whether you just bought, or built, your new gaming PC, it probably needs setting up. From installing your games, to making sure your RAM is running at full speed, there are some things to do when you first power up, so in this video I’m going to walk you through what you should be doing, and how to do it. But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
Lets start with the BIOS. I know this can be a daunting task, but it can be well worth getting things setup here before anything else, although you can do any of this at any time. First, a BIOS update. This isn’t always essential, but can give you extra performance, better stability, or let you overclock higher, so well worth doing. What you’ll need is a USB stick, and ideally another computer although you can use your main one if that’s all you have. Either way, find out what motherboard your system has – an easy way is to read the label on the middle of the board – then you can go to the manufacturer’s website page for that board. Click on “support”, or “downloads”, and find the latest BIOS file. Download it, then open the zip folder and copy the contents to your USB stick. Plug the USB stick into your new PC, and power it on, hitting the delete key until you get into the BIOS. Most boards have some sort of “easy flash tool”, so open that, select the file, then start the install. If your board already has the most up to date BIOS version, you can skip this one.
Next, you’ll want to check your memory is running at its rated speed. How you set this can vary, and will depend on both your CPU and your motherboard, but generally you are looking for a setting called “XMP”, or “DOCP”. Enable that, and press F10 to save and restart, and that’s you set.
Once in Windows, if one of your hard drives is missing from my computer, that’s likely because it hasn’t been initialised. Setting that up is pretty easy, from “This PC” press “manage” in the top bar, then click “Disk Management”. When you select that, often a window will appear asking you to initialize the drive. The MBR option is fine. Then, when it’s initialised, you’ll want to right click on the block with the black bar across it and select “New Simple Volume”, and basically press next until it gives you an option to assign a drive letter and name, pick what you want there, then press finish and you are good to go.
Finally, as a handy tip for installing as many of your favourite programs at once, a website called Ninite is really useful. Just go to the site, check what programs you want to install, then click get installer, run it, and it’ll install all of them for you. It will install to the default location which is almost always your C drive, so for something like Steam, it’s worth creating a new Steam Library folder on your HDD, assuming you have the standard ‘small SSD, large HDD’ setup.
Setting up a new library location is easy too, open steam, press Stream on the top left, then open settings. Click “Downloads”, then “Steam Library Folders”. Then press “add library folder”, create a folder on your HDD then select it, then make sure when you are installing your games you select that new folder. You can also right click on the new folder and press “make default” so you don’t have to worry about it.
So there you go, there’s a few useful tips on setting up a new gaming PC. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments, and if you want to see more videos explaining tech, check out the playlist on the end cards!