You know what, sometimes we take our Gaming PCs for granted... they are a workhorse like no other. Unlike a console, there's some maintenance that you should be doing to your priceless Gaming PC, just like you would to your house or car. We're going to run through some of those things now so that your Allied Gaming PC stays at its tippy-top performance.

Maintaining Your Allied Gaming PC:

Cleaning:

• Regularly dust off your Gaming PC with a can of compressed air, making sure to pay special attention to the vans and vents inside of your PC where dust accumulates. 
• For a deeper clean, carefully remove some of the key components from your Gaming PC -- like the graphics card and RAM -- cleaning their respective slots with compressed air.
• Use a microfiber cloth to very gently clean the exterior of your PC, keeping it looking dapper (you don't want the beautiful RGB lights inside to go to waste!)

Optimising Software:

• Always ensure Windows is up to date by running Windows Update regularly, as it will make sure all required software and drivers are up to date.
• Ensure you've got the very latest GPU drivers for your GeForce or Radeon graphics card, either by enabling auto driver updates in Radeon Software or GeForce Experience, or by manually downloading the drivers as they're released.

AMD Radeon GPU drivers download link

NVIDIA GeForce GPU drivers download link

• Use software utilities to clean up and delete unwanted files and applications that will be taking up precious storage space, or slowing down your Gaming PC.
• Close down unwanted and unused apps when you're gaming, some of them will use precious resources like RAM and CPU cores (even if it's just a few percent) which could slow down your gaming performance.

Keep An Eye On Your CPU + GPU Temperatures:

We would recommend downloading some software to make sure your CPU and GPU are running at their optimal temperatures... you don't want one of them overheating now, do you? You can download MSI Afterburner and its sister software RivaTuner Statistics Server (which comes in the download package). Installing both of these lets you keep a closer eye on your CPU and GPU temperatures. 

Avoiding Overheating:

• Wherever you've placed your Gaming PC, make sure that it has good ventilation. If you've placed it somewhere cramped... well, it's going to heat up more than it would with more airflow going into it. 
• Try not to place it on the ground as your system fans will suck up all the dirt and hair off the carpet (if it's on the carpet). Try to get it off the ground into a well-ventilated spot. If you're forced into having it on the ground, and your Gaming PC is running hot, consider having a fan in front of it blowing air into the system so that there's no dust + hair buildup.

Upgrading your components: 

• We configure all of our Ready to Ship Gaming PC with at least 16GB of RAM, which is a minimum recommended by the team at Allied Gaming, but I would suggest an upgrade to 32GB of RAM when you're purchasing the system. If you don't do it right away, it should be the first planned upgrade to your Gaming PC.
• 8GB of VRAM on the GPU is the bare minimum that we recommend, but 12GB or even 16GB+ is what you want to "future-proof" your Gaming PC. For example, the GeForce RTX 3060 ships with 8GB of VRAM while the GeForce RTX 4070 packs 12GB of VRAM. If you want the absolute ultimate, AMD's flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX packs 24GB of VRAM, so too does NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 with 24GB of VRAM onboard.
• If you've purchased a mid-range graphics card -- let's say the GeForce RTX 3060 -- and you plan an upgrade to something far more powerful in the future, you'll need to make sure of a few things. First, the case has room to have a bigger GPU, and the PSU needs to have enough power to feed the new GPU more power.

Additional Maintenance Tips:

Managing Cables: 

I'm a huge personal fan of using velcro straps to keep my cables feeding into my Gaming PC neat, which is easy! They're a cheap, versatile, non-permanent solution to keeping your cable management game on point. You should have cables for your power, mouse, keyboard, headset, and others feeding into a single velcro-strapped managed line running near your PC. Nice and neat! This also keeps the tangled mess at bay, making getting to and accessing your Gaming PC super-easy.

HDD Maintenance (optional):

• Some people still use mechanical HDDs versus the newer SSDs and even newer NVMe M.2 SSDs that we install into our Ready to Ship Stinger, Patriot, and M.O.A.B. Gaming PCs. If you're using a mechanical HDD, remember to regularly defrag it to make sure you're getting the quickest and most efficient file access.
• If you're still using an HDD, we'd strongly consider upgrading to an SSD for super-fast near-instant access to your games and especially Windows. It provides a generally smoother-operating Gaming PC overall, too.

Anti-Virus + Security:

• The internet is a dangerous place, so we recommend using a reliable anti-virus software kit to protect your PC from malware and other nasty attacks that could put your precious files at risk, as well as slowing down your Gaming PC, and you really don't want that now, do you? Nope.

Check for Hardware Issues:

• Hearing a weird noise? Check it out. Can't find it or fix it, contact us! We'll help you. 
• PC slowing down and you don't know why? Try rebooting it (no, seriously, it works most of the time). Still doesn't work? Make sure no software is having issues (using too much RAM or CPU threads). If you still can't fix it, reach out! We're here to help you. Remember... here at Allied Gaming, we #GameAsOne.