Check out our recommendations on the Best PC Cases in 2021 (so far!): ruclips.net/video/ffuAnwGivO8/видео.html Watch our warnings about buying a pre-built gaming PC over here: ruclips.net/video/cKxBogvUe_c/видео.html Grab a GN Modmat, high-quality Mouse Mat, toolkit, shirt, or more to support our work while getting something in return: store.gamersnexus.net/ Get access to the behind-the-scenes videos (and some bonus GN wallpapers) here: patreon.com/gamersnexus
What about OSD? MSI Afterburner, FPS Monitor, Aida64. Also Process Hacker and Process Explorer help to see program load by threads. It's pretty clear shows cpu bottleneck.
Great list, but I would recommend people learn powershell instead of cmd going forward. Sure they can both be used to accomplish many of the same goal, but Microsoft seem to be going the way of the powershell, leaving cmd only as a legacy support kinda of thing. That being said, there is little sense in learning cmd when you could just go with powershell if you are starting from scratch and they both come by default in every windows 10 installation.
Lightshot, It’s a great application if you’re not the one using it, you could’ve at least mentioned that if you try to share the screenshot you made, it will be publicly avaliable on a 3rd party website. If you simply edit and URL of the screenshot you shared, you’ll find many private images and even bank/bitcoin account screnshots.
I have tried to find an Apu, that is present on ddr3 and ddr4 platforms, in the same configuration. That would be extremely interesting to highlight the generational difference. Can you put together something that is close enough?
Wow I was so hooked on the old intro, I didn't know how cool the new one would be. Hating it because its not the old one but loving it at the same time because its awesome haha
@@GamersNexus Respectfully, is there any chance you guys could make room to test/discuss the microsoft thread scheduler, and how people turned off hypertheading to buff performance as a sort of clear historical peak relevance to encourage more science into this matter? You may notice though my channel is still a early death star construction project, ive taken the time to include CPU optimization to counter draw call overhead costs of raytracing. Im looking to build a very detailed library of the great intel compiler and the applications it has afflicted as well. You know. For science. I understand the political climate but i personally dont care if that offends. Change is coming regardless but i assumed it was a double edged sword you might entertain as a public educational piece. Its ancient history now but the thread scheduler is a safe talking point that matters today.
@@GamersNexus Basically if im CPU bound i can chuck the game on my slowest CCX and logical cores to further induce that bottleneck. It makes it easy to find the optimum number in this case. Kind of like taking cache/IMC frequency over core more isnt always better.
@@GamersNexus Revisiting the Cache Interference Costs of Context Switching - CiteSeerX by R Fromm. All i know bro is what i can test. The complicated jargon is meaningless at this time. Bring the Light of Technological Jesus to us poor PC Master Race barbarians. Educate and civilize us from the default ways.
Content has been fire lately.. coming back after a couple years it's amazing to see how the videos have improved. Genuinely interesting and entertaining.
@@TheAlmightyOS They're also the reason why I smile when they Frankenstein something or the LN2 interjects a hiss. Component fire experiments, microscope imaging and also, riding a terrible bike like they're reviewing a 1050ti scam card and want to see it break down.
Here's a few recommendations I often use as well: -Shutter Encoder - free - used for changing encoded file types (for example from .mp4 to .webm or .jpg to .png). Has batch support and a ton of other features as well. -Process Explorer - free - gives in depth info for running processes. Need some knowledge to utilize properly but is very powerful. (a common use case of mine is finding out which process is preventing a certain file from being deleted). -WizTree - free - like WinDirStat but waaaay faster. Gives you detailed overview of what's consuming your storage. -CustomResolutionUtility - free - allows you to overclock your monitor's refresh rate and fine tune your display -PrimoCache - paid - this one is special - it's a caching software that allows you to cache often accessed blocks onto an SSD (same idea as intel Optane but it works on any hardware). For example I cache my 2TB HDD on to a 120GB SDD. This substantially speeds up file load time (aka games load faster) - your large HDD can achieve 'near' SSD speeds for read and/or write. Imho it's an easy way to dramatically boost your storage speed without overpaying for something like a large SSD. Takes some knowledge to set up properly. In my opinion, a very valuable tool, especially for budget minded gamers.
How exactly does one "overclock" display refresh rate when that's specifically a hardware limitation? my monitor is not capable of above 60 hz phsyically.
@@TheWizardboy5 Usually the limitations are lower than actual physical hardware panel limitations. For instance you could usually overclock a 60hz panel to 75hz or 120hz to 144hz. In some rare cases you could go even higher. Plenty of resources online.
Also one related to printers: NAPS2 which is open source and free scanning program. It has OCR (making text on paper digital form so you can copy it etc) but best of all... you dont need those horrible bloatware programs like HP smart that literally require me to make an account JUST TO SCAN.
I came here today to make sure I checked like on this video . Most of the time I start watching and then bail without checking it. Just always rushing around :)
@@alouisschafer7212 Unless you disable User Account Control (which is strongly discouraged), you still have to "run as administrator" if your account is an administrator.
Little tip with command prompt/powershell: Typing either "cmd" or "powershell" into the filepath of the directory you're currently in will open up a command prompt already in that directory, saving you a bunch of time with "cd folder" inputs.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command\ (default) C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process -FilePath "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe" -Verb RunAs -ArgumentList '/K"CD %L\"'" Now you can right-click on a folder to open cmd here as admin. I use cmd all the time so opening the restricted cmd window isn't good enough. You can also add the String key "HasLUAShield" (no value) to \cmd\ so it shows a UAC shield. Who doesn't like being fancy?
Other suggestions for more editing and video: FFMPEG Batch Converter, a UI FFMPEG program to do any kind of video processing, transcoding, remuxing, resoluton changes, proxies etc Or just FFMPEG for the CMD line, use .bat files like mentioned in the video to do video processing! VoiceFX: Nvidia Broadcast/RTX voice plugin for editing programs! Virtual Audio Cable: Virtual and up to 256 audio drivers, really useful for splitting audio so OBS can record different programs on different tracks Everything: A search function in Windows that actually works!
I use AviDemux to convert videos. It probably does a lot more too but that is what I use it for. Works on all relevant OSes. For searching files, I use Agent Ransack. Multithreaded, so much faster than Windows search. Plus I can turn off indexing. Total Commander for manipulating files, moving, batch-unzipping etc.
@@MrPunkassfuck Total Commander have been in the first-to-install tools since the DOS days. (Of course back then it was Norton Commander). cant live without it.
@@Deczteryoes it should be the default search engine, I can't fathom how terrible windows is at searching when it's clearly possible to do it instantly like Everything does
Another software recommendation, although it doesn't play a role in testing really, is Everything. It creates a hierarchy of every single file and folder on your PC, and it instantly gives results when searching. Windows native search is laughable, but this has helped me so much. It's so useful for wiping all leftover data from something you uninstall, or for locating something you can't find by rooting around the directory.
You mean versus the news video we published yesterday? I'm not sure if Andrew added it yet, but he read the couple critical comments there were and immediately worked on adding higher resolution lightning textures and a little more contrast on the logo vs. the background. If it's not in this video, it'll be in the next one. Andrew has kept working on it for small improvements each day!
@@GamersNexus I did mean vs. yesterday- I was really noticing the excellent new rendered intro and then lighting struck. Like it! I grabbed the wallpapers Tx!
As someone brand new to the PC world, videos like these are always worth a like, save, and watch in their entirety. Thank you, Steve and the GN team for putting this together. I'm glad to be a part of the fold.
The PSU blowing up was fantastic. The very much so "Oh, this again look" was great. Also, CMD is so very underrated. I know a lot of people are still super scared of it because it can change so much, but you really have to know what you are doing to even get to that point of doing too much. Basic pings, tracert, hell even x copies are great things to be familiar with.
As someone who has become very comfortable with the terminal due to daily driving linux, I'd like to thank you for doing your part in taking potential fear and stigma away from that aspect of computing!
When I subbed to the Patreon it was because the content was good and I learned so much, but your output lately is genuinely next level and I'm super proud to be a supporter. I hope everyone at GN knows how amazing they are, looking forward to what you do next! Also the new intro/outro looks and sounds great.
Thanks for the useful software advice! I thought I should mention some apps I use regularly as a developer (all freeware): VSCode - I use this text editor as a replacement for Notepad++. It has a lot of nice extensions available, and an integrated terminal. ScreenToGif - If you want a snipping tool that can capture a gif this is a life saver. Git For Windows - Comes with a MinTTY terminal emulator that enables some useful Linux commands. Also has the option to "Git Bash Here" when you right click inside a directory in File Explorer, saving you the hassle of typing cd to get there. I use this as my integrated terminal in VSCode. Postman - A crazy useful tool for anyone who works with HTTP requests or REST APIs. Another tip: Win+X can be used to launch cmd as admin. If powershell appears in this menu instead, right click your taskbar and go to taskbar settings to change it back to cmd. A windows command I'd like to shout out: schtasks The command line version of the Task Scheduler is very useful for any scripts you'd like to schedule to run regularly. I use this for a few monitoring and logging utils.
Would love to see the XOC version of this video. How you set up your PCs for XOC runs or even just normal air OC runs; how you strip down windows, any settings you tweak in windows\software to get the most of out of the benchmark, or any tips\tricks most overlook when firing up a benchmark. Maybe things like does removing your extra drives during a bench make a difference, or leaving all your peripherals plugged in or not, etc
ShareX is also a good tool for screenshots. I prefer it over Lightshot because it can automatically upload the image to imgur and copies the link to your clipboard. It makes it a little easier to share the image and avoids cluttering your files.
Lightshow also automatically uploads images and puts the link into your clipboard. But ShareX can upload to basically any platform you'd wanna upload to, and does Video and general files and text and stuff too! I wanted to comment to shill for ShareX too but you're almost underselling it's awesomeness :D
General system performance maintenance, I recommend Process Lasso, especially for Threadripper systems. Makes it much easier to control apps, threads, memory profile, performance etc.
Very good list of software! Although I believe it might be missing some drive related software, like CDM, CDI and HD Sentinel. Another bit I felt like was missing would be various debugging commands, like dxdiag, and cmd debugging commands, like sfc/scannow, and the suite of dism commands. Either way, this is a great video to visit with any clean install of windows! :)
Fair, although HWINFO includes SMART stats in its non-sensor window. Good point though. We don't work much with storage. Great suggestion on sfc! We should do a full piece on command prompt at some point -- maybe more suitable for the side channel, though!
I remember using dxdiag regularly during the Windows 9x and maybe early XP period but otherwise haven't thought about it in years. I wasn't even aware it was still supported. I wonder what kind of issues it can help with. It tells me AGP textures are accelerated, lol.
@@alouisschafer7212 I believe it was chkdsk that had some weird issues in a past windows update (few months ago), but I haven't heard anything about scannow doing weird things.
Steve, this gonna blow your mind: holding Shift+Ctrl and clicking CMD will start it as Admin. This works with any application, and even if you start the program with Enter from Run or Start Menu Search (so Shift+Ctrl+Enter)
Professional IT guy here with a cool command line trick for networking issues. Instead of using ping and traceroute (tracert), try using pathping. Pathping does the job of both and it shows some slightly different information than the standard traceroute. Run it from cmd or PowerShell using the format “pathping ”. I tend to use it with IP addresses exclusively, but I’m pretty sure you can drop a URL in there and get results. You can always type “pathping /?” to view the man page for more info.
if you want to record moments in the past with OBS instead of Shadowplay/ReLive you can! in output enable replay buffer, choose how long you want the clip to be and bind it in hotkeys. same as the others but more advanced video options (can record higher than 60 fps for example).
I'd like to recommend 2 programs which have helped me greatly over the years. WinDirStat is a GODSEND for anyone who installs a bunch of games and leaves them in storage, taking up too much space. WinDirStat visualises the space files take on your storage system, and makes it incredibly easy for you to find those pesky files and deleting them. I've used it for a long time and it stops cleaning your storage system from being a time consuming chore. Has a game ever crashed on you and resisted closing? Did the game stop you from opening up task manager to end program? SuperF4 lets you instantly close the game without needing to interface with a program. Download it, pin it to start so you can run it when a game crashes. It opens up in the hidden icons next to where the time is displayed, and right click on it to open up xkill which taskkills any program you click on. Saved me the trouble of restarting soo many times.
I second WinDirStat - so useful for a quick visualization of file type size distribution! SuperF4 makes total sense but I've never heard of it - will have to try it out.
One CMD Prompt command that I have used a lot when working on other computers is sfc /scannow, and other times if that didn't work would be running the DISM to repair the image. I ended up building my own batch file since I got tired of typing it all, just was easier to put the .bat file on their PC and just run the .bat file and navigate using the menu I put in it.
Wish you'd mentioned "PerfCap" in GPU-Z, the equivalent to the limiters you showed in CPU-Z. This field is amazingly helpful for understanding what is the current limit on your GPU's performance - or how it changes throughout a test or a workload - maybe you're hitting power at some point, temp at another; So, you have two issues to address, even though looking at any one point in time you'd likely only see one or the other.
Wowww, I remember using commands like that when DOS was a thing as a kid lol. I don't do anything with computers professionally in my adult life so, I'm actually glad to see people still using this stuff lol
Great video as always, thanks for the software recommendations! My little grain of sand for the info @ 22:14 ... 'shutdown -t [time in seconds] -r' is for restart, 'shutdown -t [time] -s' is for complete shutdown.
Great information. Thank you! Note: You can do retroactive video capture with OBS. EposVox has a video where he shows how to set this up. In his video, he actually shows how to do instant replays with a special transition effect for a streaming scenario, but you could just use the part he shows with retroactive recording file saving.
great content as always Steve. As for GPU overclocking id say afterburner is going to be gone soon as MSI have the download disabled on the website trying to push their dragon center
what do you mean? you dont like your ryzen cpu to boost for no reason at all? you dont like high cpu usage and power-draws while idling? and on top, you dislike buggy rgb control software and previously patched security vulnerabilities that come with them? hmm. you are not ready for corsair products my boi
Thank you for this video! Maybe you should do a video on programs you should avoid downloading, especially popular ones that aren’t as good as people think.
Nice to see these type come back. Even if I know the stuff, getting it from trusted sources is a nice refresh and great for new people. The constant need to wag the finger at products wears on me at times and I take breaks from the channel. Not the channel's fault bad products exist, maybe more fun products now and then like the cat and anime stuff lol.
ShareX as a screenshotting tool has been invaluable for me as a consultant. - Open source and free (as in free beer) with 13 years of active development - Delayed capture - Capture video - Capture as animated gif - Built-in editor - Google drive and other integrations It has pretty much anything I've ever wished for in a screenshot tool.
Subscribed, this is the kind of tech focused i come for. Not that all the others channels are not helpful but this on is clearly more mature and go deeper into the technical stuff where i truly learn something i didn't have a clue about. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Good job as usual in making a guide for people less used to monitoring their PC while OCing or general checkups. I learned so much over the years watching your videos, and I'm sure this video will be invaluable to many people. Thank you for your work. Also at 3:25 , I had a Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 1050W Platinum, do exactly that the first time I plugged it in... It proved me right in always testing my PSU without plugins in component, first one in 15y to blow like that, but had I not double checked I would've risked thousand of dollars worth of equipment. TT replaced it no question asked. the 2nd unit has been working 24/7 for the past 5years. I cannot wait to see your video on PSUs... this will be an interesting one I bet.
I personally have never been a fan of lightshot because of their image hosting that uses a wrapper instead of just directly linking the image, but those editing tools on the fly and options are cool. Better than snipping tool for sure. As far as batch image processing, I actually think ffmpeg may be an alternative. Better or worse I don't know, but it's an option. You can do something like `ffmpeg -i images/*.png comment_%04d.png` for renaming. You can also convert to other image formats with different compression levels, crop, scale, etc. It's a bit more technical, but some people may like it. And of course, you can do video conversion with it too. Edit: As far as OBS, I'd like to mention encoding settings: If you're capturing a game where you're not 100% using the CPU (or especially if you're using a second PC to capture), X264 with CRF rate control provides the highest quality, lowest CPU cost, and most efficiency (of course, less X265 being included in OBS). I usually do something like CRF 20 on faster or fast (on a 3950X) and it provides stellar quality while trying to save data where it can. It may not be super efficient with complex games, but the quality over CBR/VBR is much better instead of cranking something like NVENC to 30 Mbps and hoping it looks good.
Notepad++ has been one of my most used apps for years and yet I'm still learning about features it has that I never used before because there is so much it can do.
The most recent versions of HWiNFO are now only "Free" if you don't want to use all of the features. Shared memory support which is used by other software to pull data from it now requires a paid license, and a subscription if you want to keep getting updates. This means users of products like Rainmeter or Stream Deck monitoring plugins now have to pay.
Google told me the shared memory support is a 12h runtime limit, so either don't use it more than 12h in one session or reenable it manually after every 12h of use. You won't need to pay then.
@@SimonVaIe That 12 hours only resets on reboot, so if you just sleep your computer it will always time out. Enabling it manually through the menus is clearly just a roundabout way of trying to nag people into buying it.
@@zncon but it's not too bad as of now imo, since its an easily avoidable problem. And if you do have this problem, you're probably using the software enough that paying for more comfort is justifiable. The hope is that they don't start to do this with more features / actually put up a paywall.
I have a couple of other free tools that I use, along with everything else you mentioned here: - "O and O Shut Up" , is a tool that allows you to turn off many windows functions that are running in the background. It can give you a much cleaner startup experience. - Lockhunter - a tool that allows you to see what process has locked a file, and allows you to unlock it. It has saved my ass a couple of times. - Xmedia Recode - like Faststone is for images, Xmedia Recode is for media files, with many batch tools available. One of the most regularly used tools for simple media manipulation I have.
Notepad++ and cmd are great, something else I would recommend tho is gimp it's really good for basic image editing, and obs for recording problems or just for stuff on your computer in general.
By far one of the best and most informative pieces you have put out in a while. And nice to see how much software on your list I already use. Thanks for this, I'm sure many people will benefit from it.
A little CMD (general launching of Windows programs) tip: When searching for something from the startmenu, click and hold Ctrl + Shift, and press Enter on the selected program in the startmenu, to open it as Administrator - yay shortcuts! So: Winkey to open startmenu "CMD" to search up Command Prompt Ctrl + Shift + Enter, to open it as Administrator right away.
Would be nice to get a version of this video for Linux gaming. With the Proton supported by all major anticheats and Steam Deck being a popular thing, this is a hot topic for new linux-based gamers, however few there are. =)
Adding IrfanView as a free image viewer that does batch processing, and with its plugins it supports EVERY image type out there, Powershell as a good way to upgrade from CMD especially with WMI queries and such, Powertoys from Microsoft gives you new features, batch rename, etc. Bulk Rename Utility, another good renamer and supports RegEX. Also dont forget Windows 10 supports the Linux Kernal now so you can use a Linux terminal on the system along with different Linux programs (like how I used PiShrink on Windows)
I would add 7zip into the list. It integrates with explorer and adds many options to right click menu Hash/checksum of file/folder Advanced Unzip GUI Support for .rar and other file formats not included by default
THANKS for the list and timestamps So we can save time and only look at the Software that we don’t know/is interesting to us. Learned some new tools today! Even though I am building PCs and OCing for 10+ yrs now!
This is good content, and I hope the view count proves for more like this. Have you ever considered a 'suite' of videos; overclocking, memory timing tweaking, CPU and GPU voltage tuts for performance and long term safety ... etc ... BUT designed for those fairly fresh in the space. Obviously a lot of your viewership is advanced or beyond, but there are a bunch of us that want to get there, but find that tutorials leap from something like this (usable software) to someone running high speed through BIOS or Afterburner settings and we get lost. Then when we want to mildly overclock or work with memory timings or whatever, we back away because we just dont know enough yet, to risk a setting we dont understand. In other words ... smart enough to not do a bad thing. What is miss in the middle there, is actual learning to get over the hump.
I use s-tui on linux for everything CPU related, would recommend. It is a command line tool but it has great graphs. Notes: running it as root (adding sudo before s-tui) shows the power consumption.
You should have mentioned Everything and WinDirStat. Two programs I cannot live without, Everything is x10 better than Windows Search and WinDirStat helps you navigate used up space on your drives to find anything too. Love them both.
Check out our recommendations on the Best PC Cases in 2021 (so far!): ruclips.net/video/ffuAnwGivO8/видео.html
Watch our warnings about buying a pre-built gaming PC over here: ruclips.net/video/cKxBogvUe_c/видео.html
Grab a GN Modmat, high-quality Mouse Mat, toolkit, shirt, or more to support our work while getting something in return: store.gamersnexus.net/
Get access to the behind-the-scenes videos (and some bonus GN wallpapers) here: patreon.com/gamersnexus
good video is good
What about OSD? MSI Afterburner, FPS Monitor, Aida64.
Also Process Hacker and Process Explorer help to see program load by threads. It's pretty clear shows cpu bottleneck.
Great list, but I would recommend people learn powershell instead of cmd going forward. Sure they can both be used to accomplish many of the same goal, but Microsoft seem to be going the way of the powershell, leaving cmd only as a legacy support kinda of thing. That being said, there is little sense in learning cmd when you could just go with powershell if you are starting from scratch and they both come by default in every windows 10 installation.
Lightshot, It’s a great application if you’re not the one using it, you could’ve at least mentioned that if you try to share the screenshot you made, it will be publicly avaliable on a 3rd party website. If you simply edit and URL of the screenshot you shared, you’ll find many private images and even bank/bitcoin account screnshots.
I have tried to find an Apu, that is present on ddr3 and ddr4 platforms, in the same configuration.
That would be extremely interesting to highlight the generational difference.
Can you put together something that is close enough?
Wow I was so hooked on the old intro, I didn't know how cool the new one would be. Hating it because its not the old one but loving it at the same time because its awesome haha
Totally understand that feeling!
Gotta say totally missing the modem sounds in the outro lol don't know why
@@GamersNexus Why not use older versions on some specific occasions, would be a cool throwback
New intro is very FeelsGood. It's like when a game has a nice shotgun and it's just fun to use.
@@Uranthos1 I really miss that.
I like how Steve already know what exploded. He seems so nonchalant about it, it looks like its normal for PSU to "explode" everyday 😂👍
Can't wait for that video, it's gonna be "hot".....
I'll let myself out
So you're saying that you won't expect a bomb to fucking explode? And that's a bomb, not a PUS or PSU or something.
Those Gigabyte PSUS newegg is bundling with every GPU?
@@fishyc43sar It's a manufactured IED with certifications 🤔
@@kurtjustiniani1354 1000% right lol
get your I.E.D today
cpuz has been a life saver in the past trying to solve memory channels dropping when i was running x99
X99 is exactly when we've gotten use from it!
@@GamersNexus
Respectfully, is there any chance you guys could make room to test/discuss the microsoft thread scheduler, and how people turned off hypertheading to buff performance as a sort of clear historical peak relevance to encourage more science into this matter?
You may notice though my channel is still a early death star construction project, ive taken the time to include CPU optimization to counter draw call overhead costs of raytracing. Im looking to build a very detailed library of the great intel compiler and the applications it has afflicted as well. You know. For science.
I understand the political climate but i personally dont care if that offends. Change is coming regardless but i assumed it was a double edged sword you might entertain as a public educational piece.
Its ancient history now but the thread scheduler is a safe talking point that matters today.
@@GamersNexus
Basically if im CPU bound i can chuck the game on my slowest CCX and logical cores to further induce that bottleneck. It makes it easy to find the optimum number in this case. Kind of like taking cache/IMC frequency over core more isnt always better.
@@GamersNexus
Revisiting the Cache Interference Costs of Context Switching - CiteSeerX
by R Fromm.
All i know bro is what i can test. The complicated jargon is meaningless at this time.
Bring the Light of Technological Jesus to us poor PC Master Race barbarians. Educate and civilize us from the default ways.
Oh God... I'm still on x99....
Content has been fire lately.. coming back after a couple years it's amazing to see how the videos have improved. Genuinely interesting and entertaining.
Literal fire. As in PC hardware catching fire.
Steve and team is why I keep a fire extinguisher near my PC now.
@@TheAlmightyOS They're also the reason why I smile when they Frankenstein something or the LN2 interjects a hiss. Component fire experiments, microscope imaging and also, riding a terrible bike like they're reviewing a 1050ti scam card and want to see it break down.
What were you in prison for?
Blow it out yo ass, Snakedoktor, the content was always fire.
New intro is SO sick. I love it.
But the outro no longer screams.
RTX ON
I rewinded like 5 times, to enjoy it :))
Especially when you use good earphones or headphones. The bass is sick!
@@conyo985The electrical noise is fun. Always love the bass thump. 60fps suits this channel very nicely.
Here's a few recommendations I often use as well:
-Shutter Encoder - free - used for changing encoded file types (for example from .mp4 to .webm or .jpg to .png). Has batch support and a ton of other features as well.
-Process Explorer - free - gives in depth info for running processes. Need some knowledge to utilize properly but is very powerful. (a common use case of mine is finding out which process is preventing a certain file from being deleted).
-WizTree - free - like WinDirStat but waaaay faster. Gives you detailed overview of what's consuming your storage.
-CustomResolutionUtility - free - allows you to overclock your monitor's refresh rate and fine tune your display
-PrimoCache - paid - this one is special - it's a caching software that allows you to cache often accessed blocks onto an SSD (same idea as intel Optane but it works on any hardware). For example I cache my 2TB HDD on to a 120GB SDD. This substantially speeds up file load time (aka games load faster) - your large HDD can achieve 'near' SSD speeds for read and/or write. Imho it's an easy way to dramatically boost your storage speed without overpaying for something like a large SSD. Takes some knowledge to set up properly. In my opinion, a very valuable tool, especially for budget minded gamers.
Thanks for the WizTree recommendation; I use WinDirStat and it's very helpful for cleanups, but will take a look at WizTree then. :)
How much does primocache cost? Like, 2TB sata SSDs are quite reasonably priced now
How exactly does one "overclock" display refresh rate when that's specifically a hardware limitation? my monitor is not capable of above 60 hz phsyically.
@@TheWizardboy5 Usually the limitations are lower than actual physical hardware panel limitations. For instance you could usually overclock a 60hz panel to 75hz or 120hz to 144hz.
In some rare cases you could go even higher. Plenty of resources online.
Also one related to printers: NAPS2 which is open source and free scanning program. It has OCR (making text on paper digital form so you can copy it etc) but best of all... you dont need those horrible bloatware programs like HP smart that literally require me to make an account JUST TO SCAN.
Ok I did not realize how much I was underusing some of these programs. Thank you Steve and team.
lol the mandatorily-bundled Gigabyte 850 IED made an appearance.
Little wonder its mandatory then (stating the obvious here) lol
'850 IED'
Lmao
Can't get over how friggin amazing the new intro looks! Well done y'all! So sharp
I came here today to make sure I checked like on this video . Most of the time I start watching and then bail without checking it. Just always rushing around :)
Quick tip:
Shift + return in the start menu is a shortcut for "run as administrator".
Or run literally everything with admin priviledges by defalt by setting up a local Administrator Account
It's actually Ctrl+Shift+Enter
@@mailong.botega3040 As always the best is in the comments.
Here's another:Win+x + A runs cmd or powershell as admin
@@alouisschafer7212 Unless you disable User Account Control (which is strongly discouraged), you still have to "run as administrator" if your account is an administrator.
Little tip with command prompt/powershell:
Typing either "cmd" or "powershell" into the filepath of the directory you're currently in will open up a command prompt already in that directory, saving you a bunch of time with "cd folder" inputs.
We use it all the time! That's a great one. Love it.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command\
(default)
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process -FilePath "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe" -Verb RunAs -ArgumentList '/K"CD %L\"'"
Now you can right-click on a folder to open cmd here as admin. I use cmd all the time so opening the restricted cmd window isn't good enough.
You can also add the String key "HasLUAShield" (no value) to \cmd\ so it shows a UAC shield. Who doesn't like being fancy?
Please p
Other suggestions for more editing and video:
FFMPEG Batch Converter, a UI FFMPEG program to do any kind of video processing, transcoding, remuxing, resoluton changes, proxies etc
Or just FFMPEG for the CMD line, use .bat files like mentioned in the video to do video processing!
VoiceFX: Nvidia Broadcast/RTX voice plugin for editing programs!
Virtual Audio Cable: Virtual and up to 256 audio drivers, really useful for splitting audio so OBS can record different programs on different tracks
Everything: A search function in Windows that actually works!
I use AviDemux to convert videos. It probably does a lot more too but that is what I use it for. Works on all relevant OSes.
For searching files, I use Agent Ransack. Multithreaded, so much faster than Windows search. Plus I can turn off indexing.
Total Commander for manipulating files, moving, batch-unzipping etc.
Everything should be on every Windows PC.
Regarding Everything for Searching it makes sense to also rip out the shitty start menu and replace that with openshell
@@MrPunkassfuck Total Commander have been in the first-to-install tools since the DOS days. (Of course back then it was Norton Commander). cant live without it.
@@Deczteryoes it should be the default search engine, I can't fathom how terrible windows is at searching when it's clearly possible to do it instantly like Everything does
Another software recommendation, although it doesn't play a role in testing really, is Everything. It creates a hierarchy of every single file and folder on your PC, and it instantly gives results when searching. Windows native search is laughable, but this has helped me so much. It's so useful for wiping all leftover data from something you uninstall, or for locating something you can't find by rooting around the directory.
Is there a little more snap crackle and pop in the intro? Like it, just wondering.
You mean versus the news video we published yesterday? I'm not sure if Andrew added it yet, but he read the couple critical comments there were and immediately worked on adding higher resolution lightning textures and a little more contrast on the logo vs. the background. If it's not in this video, it'll be in the next one. Andrew has kept working on it for small improvements each day!
@@GamersNexus you can definitely tell the difference! Tell Andrew he did great work!
Well, there definitely was in that power supply!
@@GamersNexus I did mean vs. yesterday- I was really noticing the excellent new rendered intro and then lighting struck. Like it! I grabbed the wallpapers Tx!
@@ericwinberg5302 Nice! Glad it's a visible change! I think we might have some more wallpapers themed around this intro soon!
As someone brand new to the PC world, videos like these are always worth a like, save, and watch in their entirety.
Thank you, Steve and the GN team for putting this together. I'm glad to be a part of the fold.
The PSU blowing up was fantastic. The very much so "Oh, this again look" was great. Also, CMD is so very underrated. I know a lot of people are still super scared of it because it can change so much, but you really have to know what you are doing to even get to that point of doing too much. Basic pings, tracert, hell even x copies are great things to be familiar with.
That PSU heard Steve say Prime95 and was like "Nope!" POP
Intro graphics are incredibly slick, nicely done! Really helpful info in the video as well. Saved to favorites.
As someone who has become very comfortable with the terminal due to daily driving linux, I'd like to thank you for doing your part in taking potential fear and stigma away from that aspect of computing!
When I subbed to the Patreon it was because the content was good and I learned so much, but your output lately is genuinely next level and I'm super proud to be a supporter. I hope everyone at GN knows how amazing they are, looking forward to what you do next! Also the new intro/outro looks and sounds great.
Thanks 🙏 Steve for doing this subject - it was refreshing and well done. Keep up the awesome work! 👏
Man, that new intro looks so clean! It's really amazing!!
Thanks for the useful software advice!
I thought I should mention some apps I use regularly as a developer (all freeware):
VSCode - I use this text editor as a replacement for Notepad++. It has a lot of nice extensions available, and an integrated terminal.
ScreenToGif - If you want a snipping tool that can capture a gif this is a life saver.
Git For Windows - Comes with a MinTTY terminal emulator that enables some useful Linux commands. Also has the option to "Git Bash Here" when you right click inside a directory in File Explorer, saving you the hassle of typing cd to get there. I use this as my integrated terminal in VSCode.
Postman - A crazy useful tool for anyone who works with HTTP requests or REST APIs.
Another tip: Win+X can be used to launch cmd as admin. If powershell appears in this menu instead, right click your taskbar and go to taskbar settings to change it back to cmd.
A windows command I'd like to shout out: schtasks
The command line version of the Task Scheduler is very useful for any scripts you'd like to schedule to run regularly. I use this for a few monitoring and logging utils.
Would love to see the XOC version of this video. How you set up your PCs for XOC runs or even just normal air OC runs; how you strip down windows, any settings you tweak in windows\software to get the most of out of the benchmark, or any tips\tricks most overlook when firing up a benchmark. Maybe things like does removing your extra drives during a bench make a difference, or leaving all your peripherals plugged in or not, etc
ShareX is also a good tool for screenshots. I prefer it over Lightshot because it can automatically upload the image to imgur and copies the link to your clipboard. It makes it a little easier to share the image and avoids cluttering your files.
+1 for shareX, the only screen record program that just works
Yes! ShareX is amazing, been using it for years, I like it also makes GIFs and can screenshot areas
Lightshow also automatically uploads images and puts the link into your clipboard.
But ShareX can upload to basically any platform you'd wanna upload to, and does Video and general files and text and stuff too!
I wanted to comment to shill for ShareX too but you're almost underselling it's awesomeness :D
Love the new intro & the wallpapers I grabbed yesterday. No need to comment on the contents as your videos are always informative & interesting.
Thank you! Glad you like the wallpapers!
General system performance maintenance, I recommend Process Lasso, especially for Threadripper systems. Makes it much easier to control apps, threads, memory profile, performance etc.
Very good list of software! Although I believe it might be missing some drive related software, like CDM, CDI and HD Sentinel. Another bit I felt like was missing would be various debugging commands, like dxdiag, and cmd debugging commands, like sfc/scannow, and the suite of dism commands. Either way, this is a great video to visit with any clean install of windows! :)
Fair, although HWINFO includes SMART stats in its non-sensor window. Good point though. We don't work much with storage. Great suggestion on sfc! We should do a full piece on command prompt at some point -- maybe more suitable for the side channel, though!
I remember using dxdiag regularly during the Windows 9x and maybe early XP period but otherwise haven't thought about it in years. I wasn't even aware it was still supported. I wonder what kind of issues it can help with. It tells me AGP textures are accelerated, lol.
scannow is not recommend by some people bc it can apparently do weird stuff to your registry
@@alouisschafer7212 I believe it was chkdsk that had some weird issues in a past windows update (few months ago), but I haven't heard anything about scannow doing weird things.
Well, I did not know that hwinfo provides SMART data, I guess it really is an all-purpose monitoring software, although I still like using aida64.
Steve, this gonna blow your mind: holding Shift+Ctrl and clicking CMD will start it as Admin.
This works with any application, and even if you start the program with Enter from Run or Start Menu Search (so Shift+Ctrl+Enter)
I know writing content can be tricky during these mass shortages, but you guys keep knocking it out of the park. Keep up the great work.
Professional IT guy here with a cool command line trick for networking issues.
Instead of using ping and traceroute (tracert), try using pathping. Pathping does the job of both and it shows some slightly different information than the standard traceroute.
Run it from cmd or PowerShell using the format “pathping ”. I tend to use it with IP addresses exclusively, but I’m pretty sure you can drop a URL in there and get results. You can always type “pathping /?” to view the man page for more info.
if you want to record moments in the past with OBS instead of Shadowplay/ReLive you can!
in output enable replay buffer, choose how long you want the clip to be and bind it in hotkeys.
same as the others but more advanced video options (can record higher than 60 fps for example).
I had about 80% of these installed already, i feel smart.
I will send this video to my friends.
Omg it's GN Tech Tips and I love it!
You have no Idea how perfectly timed your video is. Litterally trying to figure out my 5800x 90°c issues yesterday
I'd like to recommend 2 programs which have helped me greatly over the years.
WinDirStat is a GODSEND for anyone who installs a bunch of games and leaves them in storage, taking up too much space. WinDirStat visualises the space files take on your storage system, and makes it incredibly easy for you to find those pesky files and deleting them. I've used it for a long time and it stops cleaning your storage system from being a time consuming chore.
Has a game ever crashed on you and resisted closing? Did the game stop you from opening up task manager to end program? SuperF4 lets you instantly close the game without needing to interface with a program. Download it, pin it to start so you can run it when a game crashes. It opens up in the hidden icons next to where the time is displayed, and right click on it to open up xkill which taskkills any program you click on. Saved me the trouble of restarting soo many times.
It'll also highlight that error log that has exploded to 32GB in size because of a silent error reporting constantly in the background.
I second WinDirStat - so useful for a quick visualization of file type size distribution!
SuperF4 makes total sense but I've never heard of it - will have to try it out.
One CMD Prompt command that I have used a lot when working on other computers is sfc /scannow, and other times if that didn't work would be running the DISM to repair the image. I ended up building my own batch file since I got tired of typing it all, just was easier to put the .bat file on their PC and just run the .bat file and navigate using the menu I put in it.
Wish you'd mentioned "PerfCap" in GPU-Z, the equivalent to the limiters you showed in CPU-Z. This field is amazingly helpful for understanding what is the current limit on your GPU's performance - or how it changes throughout a test or a workload - maybe you're hitting power at some point, temp at another; So, you have two issues to address, even though looking at any one point in time you'd likely only see one or the other.
Throttlestop :)
Wowww, I remember using commands like that when DOS was a thing as a kid lol. I don't do anything with computers professionally in my adult life so, I'm actually glad to see people still using this stuff lol
the video i needed from you guys
Great video as always, thanks for the software recommendations!
My little grain of sand for the info @ 22:14 ... 'shutdown -t [time in seconds] -r' is for restart, 'shutdown -t [time] -s' is for complete shutdown.
you guys have helped my baboon ass so much, THANK YOU!
apes together strong
Man this channel even years after posting still coms into play. Keep it up
Great information. Thank you!
Note: You can do retroactive video capture with OBS. EposVox has a video where he shows how to set this up. In his video, he actually shows how to do instant replays with a special transition effect for a streaming scenario, but you could just use the part he shows with retroactive recording file saving.
Steve Burke is the Einstein of the computer world. Thanks for all the info you provide Steve.
great content as always Steve. As for GPU overclocking id say afterburner is going to be gone soon as MSI have the download disabled on the website trying to push their dragon center
Crazy to find the psu explosion happen realtime in the wild, 3 years later.
Corsair prob shouldn’t have been the sponsor for the video focused on quality software everyone should have 😂😂😂
what do you mean? you dont like your ryzen cpu to boost for no reason at all? you dont like high cpu usage and power-draws while idling? and on top, you dislike buggy rgb control software and previously patched security vulnerabilities that come with them? hmm. you are not ready for corsair products my boi
straight fire
I'd never heard of Lightshot. This video is worth its weight in platinum just for that tip!
Thank you for this video! Maybe you should do a video on programs you should avoid downloading, especially popular ones that aren’t as good as people think.
That's a very long list!
dude i've been waiting so long for u guys to put something out like this. Thank you!
Who else shortly after hearing the PSU explode Also noticed the noise of all the gigabyte staff start praying omg please don't let it be one of ours
😂
Does NZXT brand PSUs? Anything within 3 feet of NZXT branding is possessed by a cursed machine spirit. Omnissiah Bless.
Nice to see these type come back. Even if I know the stuff, getting it from trusted sources is a nice refresh and great for new people.
The constant need to wag the finger at products wears on me at times and I take breaks from the channel. Not the channel's fault bad products exist, maybe more fun products now and then like the cat and anime stuff lol.
I just can't stop rewatching the intro. It's so good
ShareX as a screenshotting tool has been invaluable for me as a consultant.
- Open source and free (as in free beer) with 13 years of active development
- Delayed capture
- Capture video
- Capture as animated gif
- Built-in editor
- Google drive and other integrations
It has pretty much anything I've ever wished for in a screenshot tool.
"With these types of tools, you'll know enough to be dangerous."
Accompanied by the sick new intro, I am PUMPED for this video.
Should do an updated video of this. Just assuming a 3 year old video on software may be a little outdated. Probably new stuff to recommend id assume.
I wish they would!
I swear i think of some shit and gamers nexus just packages it into a nice video even before i can ask google
Subscribed, this is the kind of tech focused i come for. Not that all the others channels are not helpful but this on is clearly more mature and go deeper into the technical stuff where i truly learn something i didn't have a clue about. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The glow behind the video at the end seems a bit intense, otherwise this new intro/outro looks great!
Good job as usual in making a guide for people less used to monitoring their PC while OCing or general checkups. I learned so much over the years watching your videos, and I'm sure this video will be invaluable to many people. Thank you for your work.
Also at 3:25 , I had a Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 1050W Platinum, do exactly that the first time I plugged it in... It proved me right in always testing my PSU without plugins in component, first one in 15y to blow like that, but had I not double checked I would've risked thousand of dollars worth of equipment. TT replaced it no question asked. the 2nd unit has been working 24/7 for the past 5years.
I cannot wait to see your video on PSUs... this will be an interesting one I bet.
Could you do a video on checking harddrive health and other such things that hurt like your SSD boot drive dying...
samsung magician if you own an EVO ssd and CrystalDiskInfo for HDDs
@@tehJimmyy I got crystal disk. One of HDDs is on caution. How worried should I be?
@@thepolticalone961 upload a screenshot of it , if its a bad sector then its close to its death
@@tehJimmyy I can't do that here. I don't use it much anyways. But I'll look at replacing it soon
"Software is every bit as important as the hardware"
That made a developer happy
You have no GPU - hwinfo.
The next versions of HW Info featuring "sad trombone"
HOTFIX: Fixed bug where HWINFO incorrectly gave user hope
Skill issue
Hwinfo next patch includes a scan that determines if you are broke and maidenless😂
Thanks Steve! I never knew I was already a pro at Command Prompt stuff. I make durr every day! I make many durr....many many many durrrrr.
I personally have never been a fan of lightshot because of their image hosting that uses a wrapper instead of just directly linking the image, but those editing tools on the fly and options are cool. Better than snipping tool for sure.
As far as batch image processing, I actually think ffmpeg may be an alternative. Better or worse I don't know, but it's an option. You can do something like `ffmpeg -i images/*.png comment_%04d.png` for renaming. You can also convert to other image formats with different compression levels, crop, scale, etc. It's a bit more technical, but some people may like it. And of course, you can do video conversion with it too.
Edit: As far as OBS, I'd like to mention encoding settings:
If you're capturing a game where you're not 100% using the CPU (or especially if you're using a second PC to capture), X264 with CRF rate control provides the highest quality, lowest CPU cost, and most efficiency (of course, less X265 being included in OBS). I usually do something like CRF 20 on faster or fast (on a 3950X) and it provides stellar quality while trying to save data where it can. It may not be super efficient with complex games, but the quality over CBR/VBR is much better instead of cranking something like NVENC to 30 Mbps and hoping it looks good.
Notepad++ has been one of my most used apps for years and yet I'm still learning about features it has that I never used before because there is so much it can do.
I'll never get over how awesome that intro
Everyone who follows you on Twitter knew what the -POP followed by the WTF face- was. Was great to get your reaction when that happened.
The most recent versions of HWiNFO are now only "Free" if you don't want to use all of the features. Shared memory support which is used by other software to pull data from it now requires a paid license, and a subscription if you want to keep getting updates. This means users of products like Rainmeter or Stream Deck monitoring plugins now have to pay.
Google told me the shared memory support is a 12h runtime limit, so either don't use it more than 12h in one session or reenable it manually after every 12h of use.
You won't need to pay then.
@@SimonVaIe That 12 hours only resets on reboot, so if you just sleep your computer it will always time out. Enabling it manually through the menus is clearly just a roundabout way of trying to nag people into buying it.
@@zncon but it's not too bad as of now imo, since its an easily avoidable problem. And if you do have this problem, you're probably using the software enough that paying for more comfort is justifiable.
The hope is that they don't start to do this with more features / actually put up a paywall.
I have a couple of other free tools that I use, along with everything else you mentioned here:
- "O and O Shut Up" , is a tool that allows you to turn off many windows functions that are running in the background. It can give you a much cleaner startup experience.
- Lockhunter - a tool that allows you to see what process has locked a file, and allows you to unlock it. It has saved my ass a couple of times.
- Xmedia Recode - like Faststone is for images, Xmedia Recode is for media files, with many batch tools available. One of the most regularly used tools for simple media manipulation I have.
Notepad++ and cmd are great, something else I would recommend tho is gimp it's really good for basic image editing, and obs for recording problems or just for stuff on your computer in general.
By far one of the best and most informative pieces you have put out in a while. And nice to see how much software on your list I already use. Thanks for this, I'm sure many people will benefit from it.
Intro, intro. Intros everywhere.
A little CMD (general launching of Windows programs) tip:
When searching for something from the startmenu, click and hold Ctrl + Shift, and press Enter on the selected program in the startmenu, to open it as Administrator - yay shortcuts!
So:
Winkey to open startmenu
"CMD" to search up Command Prompt
Ctrl + Shift + Enter, to open it as Administrator right away.
Nexus: "how do we hype our video on PSU's?"
Questionable PSU:"I got you, watch this!" *proceeds to blow up during the filming of another video
Thank you for turning me on to this software, as I have just started this hobby.
Would be nice to get a version of this video for Linux gaming. With the Proton supported by all major anticheats and Steam Deck being a popular thing, this is a hot topic for new linux-based gamers, however few there are. =)
Check out Mangohud & Goverlay
@@Logan5Greye lxqt does it for me, nice and light as a window manager
What does lxqt provide that's similar to mangohud and goverlay?
I wanna get into linux gaming just to get it more popular. The more people do it the more support it gets which in turn will bring in more gamers
A lot of this can be done in terminal anyway
Adding IrfanView as a free image viewer that does batch processing, and with its plugins it supports EVERY image type out there, Powershell as a good way to upgrade from CMD especially with WMI queries and such, Powertoys from Microsoft gives you new features, batch rename, etc. Bulk Rename Utility, another good renamer and supports RegEX. Also dont forget Windows 10 supports the Linux Kernal now so you can use a Linux terminal on the system along with different Linux programs (like how I used PiShrink on Windows)
I would add 7zip into the list.
It integrates with explorer and adds many options to right click menu
Hash/checksum of file/folder
Advanced Unzip GUI
Support for .rar and other file formats not included by default
its basically better winrar.
@@EvilTurkeySlices yes
I love the vibe and the general honesty of this channel; YT recommended it to me and that's very cool.
Power supply: "PAY ATTENTION TO ME REEE- **POP** "
THANKS for the list and timestamps
So we can save time and only look at the Software that we don’t know/is interesting to us.
Learned some new tools today! Even though I am building PCs and OCing for 10+ yrs now!
the intro logo became electrifying amazing
Steve is the Lord of tech, I really respect this dude, keep up good work.
I always forget about Notepad++, used that a ton almost 20 years ago during my coding classes. Made it so much easier than other things.
The new Kid on the Block is now Visual Studio Code (VSC). You should try it!
Also a great mention to powershell, which is a more modern command prompt that offers some extra useful features
Thanks for the Faststone tipp. I was Using the old Picasa 3.9 and searched for an alternative. seems found today.
This is good content, and I hope the view count proves for more like this.
Have you ever considered a 'suite' of videos; overclocking, memory timing tweaking, CPU and GPU voltage tuts for performance and long term safety ... etc ... BUT designed for those fairly fresh in the space.
Obviously a lot of your viewership is advanced or beyond, but there are a bunch of us that want to get there, but find that tutorials leap from something like this (usable software) to someone running high speed through BIOS or Afterburner settings and we get lost. Then when we want to mildly overclock or work with memory timings or whatever, we back away because we just dont know enough yet, to risk a setting we dont understand.
In other words ... smart enough to not do a bad thing.
What is miss in the middle there, is actual learning to get over the hump.
I use s-tui on linux for everything CPU related, would recommend. It is a command line tool but it has great graphs.
Notes: running it as root (adding sudo before s-tui) shows the power consumption.
oh this is super useful, my first windows desktop, a dell g5 cto just arrived and am realizing how little i know of stuff like this
You should have mentioned Everything and WinDirStat. Two programs I cannot live without, Everything is x10 better than Windows Search and WinDirStat helps you navigate used up space on your drives to find anything too.
Love them both.
I forgot you guys mentioned on twitter that you had an updated intro, so watching it absolutely unprepared blew my balls off. I love it
I love the new outro backdrop
That was awesome with the outtake for the power supply. Thank you for that.
Lightshot was news that I could use. I have never bonded with the snipping tool. I'll give it a shot.
thank you for this I had built my pc two yrs ago and it messed up and I forgot which main apps I had to clock my system. major help thank so much!
Thank you for this, its so incredibly hard to find decent software and tools these days