So you’ve just got a new gaming laptop, but
what do you do next for the best experience? I’ve tested hundreds of
gaming laptops on the channel, and this is how we set them
up for optimal performance! The first thing you want to do
is get the laptop out of the box, keeping an eye out for any obvious damage
that might have happened during shipping. A brief check for any scratches or
physical damage should be enough. Depending on the model, you might have
things like keyboard or screen covers, and maybe protective plastic to peel off. Connect the included charger to a wall outlet
and plug it into the laptop before turning it on. Many brand new gaming laptops
won’t actually turn on for the first time unless you connect the charger,
even if the battery is fully charged. And the first boot when you power it on
for the first time might take a bit longer as it does some initial setup tasks, so
just be patient. When it’s powered on, you’ll want to check basic things are working,
like the screen doesn’t have any dead pixels, all keys on the keyboard work
and the touchpad clicks alright. I like to store everything that came
with the laptop in its original box, and then keep that somewhere safe.
It’s important to keep the original box it came with because if you need
to return it or send it somewhere for repairs this will be the best
option to keep it safe in shipping. For a brand new laptop, Windows is going
to give you some basic setup options before you get to the desktop. How this looks
changes over time as Windows updates, but basically this is where you’ll
need to connect to the internet so Windows can get some initial updates, and
then create a user account and password. There are also some privacy settings in
here too, and I always turn them all off. In the latest Windows 11 22H2 an Internet
connection is required to complete the setup process, and they do try to force you into using
a Microsoft account. In older versions of Windows 11 this was a bit easier to bypass, but now
in the latest version it’s pretty difficult. You can create a custom Windows 11
installation that uses a local account only, but you’d have to do a clean Windows install.
I’ll leave a link to this guide below the video. Ideally for the first time, let the laptop charge
fully up to 100% before running on battery power. Pretty much any brand new gaming laptop
from 2022 or newer is going to come with Windows 11 installed by default, so that’s
what we’re sticking with in this guide. While you could install the older Windows 10
if you really prefer it, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re buying a new laptop I just think
it’s worth embracing Windows 11 as it’s just going to offer the best features for gaming and
better support for newer hardware going forward. Take Intel’s new 12th and 13th gen processors
for example, the new hybrid architecture with P and E cores is understood better with
the Windows 11 scheduler. So basically, better performance and a better
experience under Windows 11. Once you’re into Windows at the
desktop, the first thing that I like to do is download and install all
available Windows updates. I want to make sure that Windows itself is running smoothly
before I start messing with anything else. You can get to this by either left
or right clicking the start button, going to settings, and then Windows
update from the menu on the left. You should be able to check for updates as
long as you’ve got an Internet connection. You might be given the option to restart
while other updates are either downloading or installing, so wait until those are
complete before going for the restart. After the restart, go back into Windows
update and check for updates again. Some updates can only install if other
updates have installed before them first, there’s an installation order, so after
your first round of updates you might find new updates the second time that weren’t
there before. And basically you just want to repeat this process of installing updates
and rebooting until there are no more left. The next thing that I like to do is apply all
updates through the Microsoft Store. This includes various applications that are built into Windows,
and for many gaming laptop brands it also includes the control panel software for managing the
laptop itself, so this can be an important step. It will depend on your laptop and how they
do things. The control panel software might handle updating itself for example, so
after the Windows store updates are done, open the control panel software for the laptop
and see if it wants to update. Again depending on what brand laptop you’ve got, there might
be a section in the software for updating, so just have a look around for something like
that. This is something to watch out for, many laptops have different applications
that update different things. Take ASUS for example, the Armory Crate software
is used to manage the laptop and gives you the option of updating ASUS specific bits and
pieces here, but then they also have the MyASUS software separately which can be used to
update other ASUS specific software or even BIOS. Speaking of BIOS updates, these can offer
important bug fixes or performance improvements. Again depending on your laptop, BIOS update could
be either manual or automatic. Some laptops like those from ASUS actually download the latest
BIOS through Windows update and install it automatically. Others like Lenovo let you download
the latest BIOS through their Vantage software and then install it through there, while some
like MSI require you to go to their website, download the file manually, stick
in on a USB stick and then boot the laptop into BIOS and update the BIOS
through there - not quite as convenient. Unfortunately there’s really no one size fits
all option when it comes to BIOS updates, so I’m going to have to refer you to your laptop’s
manual for detailed instructions on doing it. BIOS updates are more advanced compared to anything
else mentioned so far, and they’re more risky compared to other updates too, should something
go wrong. Which is why I’m referring you to the manual here for your specific laptop to
make sure that things are done correctly. Honestly for most people, you can
probably take a if it’s not broken, don't fix it approach and just ignore BIOS
updates unless there’s something specifically wrong with your laptop that you’re trying
to fix. Like say some sort of blue screen issue. So although most BIOS updates are pretty
straightforward once you’ve read the instructions and understand what’s going on, if you’re
worried about it it’s probably fine to skip. Next up is the graphics driver.
This step is important for gaming, because GPU drivers often
include performance improvements, especially for newly released games, and
bug fixes for known issues. So this is definitely something that you’ll want
to check for updates from time to time. Windows update might have already
installed a newer graphics driver than what the laptop came with,
but when it comes to GPU drivers, Windows update usually plays it safe and
might be a few versions or months behind the latest version. Now gaming laptops have
both the integrated graphics as part of the processor and the more powerful discrete graphics
which are actually used when running games. So two different GPUs in the same machine, and we
need drivers for both. This means if your laptop has an Intel CPU and Nvidia discrete graphics then
you’ll need both Intel graphics drivers and Nvidia graphics drivers. On the other hand, if your
laptop has an AMD Ryzen CPU but Nvidia graphics, then you’ll need AMD’s Radeon graphics and
Nvidia’s graphics drivers. An all AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics only need the
Radeon graphics drivers, as that will handle both. Personally, I like keeping the GPU
drivers of both fully up to date, but in most cases, you can get away with
just letting Windows update handle the integrated graphics drivers. But I still
definitely think that it’s worth manually keeping the discrete graphics drivers up to
date for the best performance in new games. All you have to do is download the latest version
from either Intel, AMD or Nvidia after choosing the GPU you’ve got. If you’re not sure, you could
always double check in either task manager or device manager, or failing that there’s usually
an option on the driver website to automatically detect the hardware you’ve got. Just make sure
you’re downloading the GPU driver from the official source, so Nvidia’s website for Nvidia
graphics, Intel’s website for Intel graphics, or AMD’s website for AMD Radeon graphics.
If you just do a quick Google search for AMD graphics drivers, there might be some dodgy
sites that come up before the actual AMD site, so yeah just make sure you’re in the
right spot before hitting download. Whether you’re installing Nvidia or AMD GPU
drivers, I always select the option to perform a clean installation to avoid any older versions
of stuff sticking around and causing problems. Once the graphics drivers are installed, it’s
worth checking that the screen is running at the highest possible resolution and fastest refresh
rate. I do this by right clicking the desktop and clicking display settings. Scroll down to
display resolution and make sure it’s on the highest option, then click advanced display
under ‘choose a refresh rate’ and make sure it’s as high as it goes. Sometimes a 144Hz panel
might be running at something slower like 60Hz, which would make games look more blurry
and slower than they should otherwise be. Unfortunately by default, most laptops come with
a bunch of random garbage software installed, also known as bloat. More junk processes
running in the background means a slower laptop and worse battery life, so I like
to remove as much as possible that’s not required. Sometimes companies just do this to
lower the price of their laptop. For example, an antivirus software company might pay a laptop
maker to put their software on the laptop in the hopes that you start paying the antivirus software
company for a subscription. But in my opinion, it’s your machine and you’ve bought the hardware,
so you should only run what you want on it. To see what’s installed, right click the start
icon and click installed apps. You can scroll through and uninstall anything you don’t
want. If you’re not sure what something is, Google search it first, it might be an important
driver or something. Most garbage like antivirus software will be pretty obvious. Just
search for stuff like Norton or McAfee Honestly, I really don’t think that third party
antivirus software is needed by most people. Before going full time on this YouTube channel I
used to work in security as a penetration tester, and more often than not it was vulnerabilities
in antivirus software that would actually end up giving you access to a system. It’s just
an additional weakness that can be exploited, more software that needs to be updated. Even if
we put aside the fact that antivirus software uses more resources to run and scan stuff,
which will slow down performance in games. I really think that these days the built in
Windows defender is good enough for most people, and that’s already there by default. I’d only
really consider traditional antivirus software for people that don’t know much about using
computers, like my parents, who need that extra layer of bloat to keep them a bit safer. Kind of
like training wheels for laptops I guess. Once you’ve decided which apps to keep, you can decide
whether they load up automatically during startup. Just because you might want an app installed
like Spotify, doesn’t necessarily mean that you want it to load up in the background every time
you turn the computer on. Loading more apps at startup increases the total boot time, and again
more stuff running in the background uses more resources, which then leads to worse battery
life if you don’t have the charger plugged in. To see what apps will automatically
start up when you power on the laptop, right click the start button, select
settings, then Apps from the menu on the left and choose startup. Then just simply
toggle different apps on or off as you prefer. This doesn’t actually remove
the app or stop it working, it just stops it loading up automatically at boot. Ultimately the best way to ensure that there’s
no bloatware on your new laptop is to do a fresh clean installation of Windows. Before doing
this just make sure that you’ve saved the activation key from the laptop, I’ll leave a
link below the video outlining how to do this. This is actually what I do on all of my
personal laptops, but it is a bit more advanced as once you’ve installed a clean
version of Windows you’ll need to get all the drivers and control panel software for it.
If you go this path, I really think it’s still worth installing the laptop’s main control panel
software at a minimum, as this is used to manage things like fan speed and performance modes.
Oh and also that sweet sweet RGB lighting. When it comes to the gaming laptops
that we review on the channel, we just leave the default Windows install that
comes with it, because we assume that’s what most people are going to do. That said, we do
manually uninstall the antivirus that comes with every laptop before we do any performance
testing, for all of those reasons just discussed. Something else we do is disable
core isolation. The best way to find this is to click on start and
just start typing core isolation. This is an advanced security feature that Windows
11 enables by default with a fresh install, but honestly unless you’re a target of the
NSA or something and downloading dodgy stuff, for most gamers you can get a decent
speed boost in games by turning this off. After turning it off, just
reboot to complete the process. Now although core isolation is enabled in a
fresh brand new clean installation of Windows 11, in more than 90% of gaming laptops
that I tested this year by default it was already off. Which means that most of
the companies making these gaming laptops this year decided to turn it off to
get the best performance in games. When it comes to personalization, there’s
almost an endless amount of things you can customize. Of course everything here
will come down to personal preference, but here are a few things that you
might want to consider changing. You can turn on dark mode, set a
custom wallpaper and lock screen, and set any RGB lighting to your preference. Microsoft’s Edge isn’t as bad as it used to be,
but I’m already used to Firefox and Chrome so I just use those, and you might want to install a
custom browser. I also remove the random taskbar icons that Windows likes to stick there by default
to keep things clean. Likewise you also might want to remove, or even add desktop icons. By default
the recycle bin can’t be removed from the desktop, you control it through personalization,
themes and then desktop icon settings. If your laptop supports Windows Hello,
either with a fingerprint login or using your face in the camera, it’s worth setting
up at this point, as these are great ways to speed up the process of logging in to your
machine. If you’re not sure whether or not your laptop supports these features, just
click start and start typing Windows Hello, and then in here you’ll see if a fingerprint
scanner or infrared camera are detected. At this point, you’re pretty much ready
to go and start gaming. If you want, you could also do more advanced testing like
running benchmarks to compare your laptop against similarly specced laptops to make
sure things are performing as they should. Unfortunately you can’t easily do this with most
of the games that we feature on the channel, unless you happen to be testing in
the exact same part of the game as us, which is pretty unlikely. But generally
I find tools like 3DMark Firestrike and Timespy to be pretty decent to give you a
score in terms of CPU and GPU performance. Just don’t be too surprised if your laptop
is 5% or so above or below someone else who has the same laptop with the same specs.
And of course comparing to other laptops with the same CPU and GPU might not be fair
because it will all depend on power limits. You might have a 3060 that runs at 130 watts
and someone else might have a 3060 that runs at 80 watts, so that will result in
a reasonable performance difference, even though on paper both have the same hardware. Some people also like to run a stress test
to check out temperatures. Personally I never bother doing this on any of my own laptops. At
this point I just install the apps that I plan on using and use them as normal. If there’s any
sort of obvious problem like the laptop can’t handle what I’m trying to do then I might
troubleshoot further and look into it then. But I’m not paranoid about temperatures and I
don’t spend any time worrying about it. Just use the laptop and have a good time. If it’s not
performing well it’ll probably be pretty obvious. If you haven’t actually bought a new gaming
laptop yet, then check out this video next. I go through everything you need to know to
pick your next gaming laptop. I’ve also gone through 5 best and worst gaming laptops of the
year to help you avoid picking something bad, so I’ll see you over in one of those videos next!
it me