Over the past 9 years, my gaming PC hasn’t always had high-end hardware, but it hasn’t suffered from major bottlenecks either. Whether it’s my Ryzen 5 1600 and GTX 1660 Ti budget build, or my current Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3080 rig, I’ve enjoyed playing on it. The real bottlenecks on my computer has been present in the form of high CPU temperatures, Ethernet slowdowns, frequent Windows crashes, and anomalous sleep behavior. Partly due to procrastination and partly because I was running out of ideas, I struggled with these issues longer than I should have. However, in the last few months I have managed to eliminate each of these problems from my computer once and for all. And the best part is, I didn’t have to spend a dime to do it.
I am upgrading my ISP router to fix the closed ethernet speed
It also escaped the Wi-Fi dead zone
To be clear, the Wi-Fi 5 router provided by my ISP should have been more than capable of supporting my 200Mbps plan over Ethernet to my computer. In fact, I experienced occasional drops to 100Mbps every few weeks. After checking the settings of the network adapter in Windows, I noticed that every time this happens, the connection speed between the computer and the router drops to 100 Mbps. I checked my Ethernet cable, RJ45 connectors, router settings, and adapter settings to try and fix the problem, but nothing seemed to be the culprit. When I unplugged the ethernet cable and plugged it back in, the transfer speed would sometimes go up to 1Gbps, but the problem would always return within a few weeks. That was the longest time my computer stayed at 200Mbps I tried the old SSD overprovisioning trick to fix the problem, after that the speed dropped to 100 Mbps after a few months.
Only then did I know that my router was the problem I got my ISP to replace it with a Wi-Fi 6 router. I had them do this because I wanted to solve the Wi-Fi dead zone in the farthest room, but it also solved the connection speed bottleneck. That was the only change I made to the network hardware, and the transfer rate has remained at 1 Gbps ever since. This led me to believe that the old Wi-Fi 5 router was indeed the problem, not because it was Wi-Fi 5, but probably because of its internals. Since the upgrade was done by the ISP and I didn’t pay any rent for the router, it was technically a free fix.
Updating SSD firmware to fix frequent OS corruption
I should have updated years ago
Other a chronic Windows problem Windows has been crashing every few months for the past three years. It manifested itself in the form of a computer that wouldn’t turn on with a black screen of death staring back at me. The usual tools – Startup Repair, System Restore, and SFC and DISM scans – never worked when I ran into this problem. Fortunately, I had an automated schedule set up in Macrium Reflect whereby it would create a system image every week. When nothing worked, I went back to this image and was able to use my Windows 10 installation, which was at most a week old.
I I checked the SSD for errorsran a malware scan and reinstalled Windows to bypass any lingering errors in the system images. In the end, I gave up and decided that I would have to live with the problem. However, a few months ago I updated the SSD firmware from the WD Dashboard (now known as the SanDisk Dashboard) when I saw that a new version was available. I ran the program to check the health of the SSD and ended up updating the firmware and that was the fix I was looking for. It’s been over a year since that day that I haven’t had a file corruption in my Windows 10 installation. The SSD firmware is an often overlooked aspect of most computersbut it is very important for the performance, stability and security of your drive.
I update the BIOS to solve the strange sleep behavior
It had to be one of the first things I tried
Updating the BIOS is something I always worry about because I accidentally break my computer. Even if the update is successful, you never know what errors you will encounter if the update is not 100% stable. This is the reason I have never updated the BIOS in about 4 years. My system felt fine without firmware updates until I started seeing issues with sleep mode. My computer sometimes refused to go to sleep at all, turning on either case fans, GPU fans, or RAM while everything was shutting down. This was one of those small but rather annoying problems that wouldn’t go away.
In these cases, the only way to turn off the system completely is to hold down the power button or use the PSU button to turn everything off. I checked to see if some background program was keeping the system active, but I couldn’t find anything. Even the BIOS settings are configured correctly. I finally decided to face my fears and update the BIOS in hopes that it would fix the strange power issues the system was experiencing. The update was mostly seamless and the Sleep mode behavior is gone forever. I haven’t used it BIOS flashbackbut it would make the update even simpler. There is no point in fearing BIOS updates and your computer deserves the latest performance, stability, and security improvements.
Convert SSD from MBR to GPT for scalable BAR
I was shocked because I was using an old BIOS
The latest BIOS version for my motherboard solved my problems with Sleep mode, but I was still stuck with the old BIOS. The Windows 10 install I’m using is about 10 years old now, and for some reason the SSD it’s installed on is booted as MBR instead of GPT. I only found this when I checked and saw my BIOS mode in Windows Heritage instead of UEFI next to BIOS mode. It was actively preventing me from using my computer Resizable BARthis meant that the CPU could not fully access the GPU’s VRAM. I’ve lost up to 15% game performance by missing this setting and that needs to change.
So I am I converted my SSD partitions from MBR to GPT With Command Prompt, switched to UEFI mode in the firmware and activated Resizable BAR and Decoding above 4G in the settings. The jump in gaming performance wasn’t as dramatic as I’d hoped, but I still got about a 10% increase in free, one-click performance in most titles. Windows 10 and 11 users will rarely be using an older BIOS, but if you are, it’s worth converting your drive to GPT to take advantage of Scalable BAR or Smart Access Storage.
It throttles the CPU for lower noise levels
I experienced quite a few abnormal idle temps
Ever since I bought my Ryzen 7 5700X back in 2022, I’ve never been happier with idle temps. I can understand the CPU going up into the 70’s and 80’s during boot, but seeing 55℃ when no tax is running makes no sense. I’ve always had a 240mm AIO liquid cooler on this chip, so it’s not lacking in terms of cooling hardware. Modern CPUs run hot, but the thermal behavior of my chip still seemed strange. So I finally decided to turn it down to get rid of those abnormal temps and most importantly the annoying fan noise.
I used it Curve Optimizer section of PBO settings Setting an offset around -20 (anything lower is too unstable). for undervolt’s stress testI used OCCT and a few gaming sessions to get a decent idea of how the chip behaves at high and low voltages. I was happy to see the temperature drop about 10°C during the free time. The best part was that the CPU and case fans were no longer cranking up during idle workloads. The CPU was still running hotter than the values I’ve seen online from other users, but that could be due to the weather I’ve been experiencing. Low CPU voltage guarantees lower operating temperatures and noise levels without any major performance loss. In fact, the extra thermal headroom can actually increase performance, as your CPU can maintain boost clocks for longer.
The most effective upgrades don’t cost money
The problems I solved on my computer using free upgrades were some of the most brilliant I’ve ever encountered. They were directly impacting my computer experience and should have been addressed sooner. After trying many fixes, I gave up on most of them. What ended up working were simple solutions like updating the motherboard and SSD firmware, replacing the old router, and throttling the CPU. Sometimes the best fixes don’t come from expensive hardware upgrades.
