7 Best Gaming Tools for PC

If you’ve just invested in a high-end gaming PC, the first thing you’ll want to do is load it with all the best tools to boost your gaming experience. That is, of course, right after you’ve installed some solid antivirus software.

But once your PC is protected and it’s time to start downloading tools, the question is – what do you really need? Well, we’re of the mind that less is definitely more and so we’ve come up with a list of seven free tools that we reckon cover most, if not all of the bases.

Razer Cortex: Game Booster

The idea behind Razer Cortex is simple enough – make your gaming experience better no matter what platform you’re on. And as far as we can tell, it does exactly that. Now, if you’ve spent any time gaming at all, the chances are you’ve used some of Razer’s peripherals. Their name is synonymous with gaming and so it makes sense that they have jumped into the software side of the business.

Game Booster will work on any PC that uses any platform for gaming. That in itself is pretty incredible as quite often, tools are dependent on your PC having a certain piece of software or using a particular platform. What the software does is take a look at your PC settings and try to optimize them for the game and platform that you are currently using. For giving your gaming experience a little boost, this really is a must-have app.

Steam

Even if you’re completely new to gaming, the chances are that you’ve heard of Steam. It’s the king of all online gaming platforms and no self-respecting gamer will have a PC without Steam installed.

Steam offers you the chance to play free-to-play games and the option to buy both cheap and expensive gaming titles. The best thing about this tool is that you play within the secure platform environment, which is always a good thing, right? Of course, you will download games onto your hard drive, but having them all available on one platform makes things so much easier to navigate.

f.lux

You know how blue light is bad for you? It still doesn’t stop you gaming though, does it? That’s where f.lux comes in handy. This free software will work in the background to adjust your screen settings depending on the time of day. Just set it up and let it run by itself.

This software is particularly useful for games that have a single screen with repetitive motions such as online casino games. By softening the light, f.lux allows you to spend more time gaming, which is particularly good for those of us who like to play long into the night.

LogMeIn Hamachi

The brilliantly named LogMeIn Hamachi lets you enjoy multiplayer games on a secure virtual network. And best of all, like all the other tools on this list, it’s free. When you want to create a network between multiple computers (which you will) then this is the tool to rule them all.

You can share files across the vpn using secure P2P protocol, play private games with your gaming buddies and access servers. In a nutshell, it’s everything you need for creating a private gaming network.

TeamSpeak

Speaking of gaming with friends, our next tool is another must-have for those gaming get-togethers. As you can probably guess, TeamSpeak is a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) app that allows you to chat with your friends securely.

Yes, there are tons of options out there for a VoIP app, but TeamSpeak is the go-to app for it’s incredible array of features and settings. You can encrypt your conversations, fine-tune your audio, share files, and you can even host your own private server. It works seamlessly in any PC set-up and connecting to your friends is super simple.

OBS Studio

This may not be an essential tool for those new to gaming but trust us, once you start getting into your games you’ll want to start streaming your gameplay live to Twitch or YouTube. Once again, you have plenty of options, but OBS Studio is by far the most popular, and with very good reason.

The greatest thing about OBS is that it doesn’t restrict your streaming in the way other apps do. You can stream to your own server or choose other portals such as Twitch etc. It’s extremely easy to set up and if you’re feeling a little more adventurous, you can use the studio to add graphics to your streams. Uber-professional streaming for free? How can you not download this app.

MSI Afterburner

Overclocking your GPU has never been easier. It sounds super technical and it sort of is, but with MSI Afterburner overclocking is pretty straightforward. Although MSI originally brought this tool out for their own range of graphics cards, it was so popular that they decided to allow gamers with both Nvidia and AMD cards to use the software.

Afterburner helps your GPU reach its potential and work at absolute optimum levels of performance throughout your gaming sessions. Remember though that overclocking can cause some heat issues. So make sure you have an adequate cooling system in place before you start playing around with its settings.

Honorable mention goes to lolo System Mechanic, which helps you identify optimizations that can further boost your PC’s performance. And for those of you who like to clear out all those junk files on a regular basis, we have to mention Piriform CCleaner. This app makes cleaning out any temporary files a breeze, and you can even schedule regular cleanups if you’re as forgetful as we are.

So that’s it. These are the apps and tools that your gaming PC simply can’t do without. Get downloading them now and let us know what kind of a difference they made to your gaming experience.