Overclock your PC

One way you can speed things up is by overclocking your processor so both it and your RAM run faster than they were designed to. There are dangers with this approach — overheating can shorten your components’ lives — but official tools help to minimise the danger. AMD users should install AMD Overdrive ( www.amd.com/ overdrive); Intel users should download and install the Extreme Tuning Utility ( bit.ly/extrtunutil).

1 OVERCLOCKING MADE EASY

Your overclocking options with Intel’s utility vary according to the processor you have — some will be incredibly limited, others will offer more scope. If supported, the utility will also enable you to overclock the onboard graphics.

2 TEST YOUR OVERCLOCK

After tweaking your settings (visit bit.ly/pcgoclock for a detailed guide courtesy of PC Gamer), select Stress Test to perform a five-minute stress test across processor, memory and/or graphics depending on what you overclock.

3 BENCHMARK IT

Select ‘Benchmarking’ to run a quick series of benchmarks to see the effects of your overclocking — benchmark before you start, and perform three benchmarks at a time, taking an average to give you a more accurate result.

4 APP-PROFILE PAIRING

Click ‘Save’ under Advanced Tuning to create a profile of your overclocked settings. Pair this profile with a specific app under App-Profile Pairing, so your PC is only overclocked when needed — for example, when playing games or HD video editing.