PC Gaming Discord Wiki

Welcome to the PC Gaming Wiki! This website will house links and tutorials for the vast amount of useful free software out there on the web. Links are to the softwares main page unless otherwise noted, downloads for github are found on the right side of the page labeled “Releases”.

Table of Contents:

• Websites
• Benchmarking / Stress Testing
• Informational
• USB Booting / Imaging
• Customization
• Other

Posts & How-To’s

• How to use DDU - Link (placeholder)

• Medicat tutorial - Link

Helpful Software & Links - All Free to Access and Use

• Websites:

  • Cultists PSU Tier List
    • Large tier list for computer power supplies
  • PCPartPicker
    • Powerful PC part compatibility and price comparing tool, use the provided sharable link to share your PC.
  • SSD List - Google Sheets
    • Contains most well known consumer SSDs, contains things like DRAM cache, flash type, etc.
  • SteamDB / ProtonDB
    • Third party tools with information on player counts / price history (SteamDB) and linux compatibility (ProtonDB).
  • Why UserBench is Unreliable - Youtube
    • Yeah, just don’t use them, use 3DMark/Cinnebench for benchmarking

• Benchmarking / Stress Testing:

  • 3DMark - Steam
    • The free version is the “demo” on steam, CPU and GPU benchmark. Time Spy is commonly used.
  • Cinebench R23
    • CPU Benchmarking tool
  • Furmark
    • A popular GPU burn test, 15-30 minute test length recommended so long as temperatures are safe
  • MSI Afterburner
    • Overclocking tool for graphics cards, EVGA Precision X1 recommended for EVGA cards (RIP EVGA)
  • Prime95 Download
    • A popular CPU burn test, 15-30 minute test length recommended so long as temperatures are safe
  • Unigine Superposition
    • Modern GPU benchmarking and stress tool

• Informational Software:

  • BlueScreenView
    • View past Blue Screen of Death/Bug Check dumps, this provides the error code and the offending drivers/services that likely caused the crash.
  • CPU-Z / GPU-Z
    • Excellent tools that provide detailed information about your CPU/GPU
  • CrystalDiskInfo / CrystalDiskMark
    • S.M.A.R.T monitoring and synthetic drive read/write speed testing
  • HWMonitor / HWInfo
    • Primarily for monitoring temperatures, clock speeds, etc. HWInfo provides less monitoring and more hardware information.
  • LibreHardwareMonitor
    • FOSS alternative to HWMonitor, supports logging/graph creation. UI similar to HWMontior.
  • Snappy Driver Installer Origin
    • A free driver installer that seems to work well, installing the (few) drivers you need manually is still recommended

• USB Booting / Imaging

  • MediaCreationTool - Windows 10
    • Required to install, or repair windows. Helpful to have one lying around, just in case.
  • Medicat
    • A vast 20GB collection of nearly every tool you could ever need for disaster recovery. Though it will cause Windows Defender to freak out.
  • Netboot.xyz
    • Versatile iPXE server, requires a machine/VM to boot the netboot image and host other images.
  • UUPDump
    • 3rd party that rips windows images and updates for ease of access, these are unmodified copies.
  • Ventoy
    • Useful tool for creating bootable USB drives with >1 disk image

• Customization Software:

  • FanControl - GitHub
    • A powerful and lightweight fan control software for Windows.
  • Lively Wallpaper
    • Allows for extended customization of the desktop wallpaper
  • Microsoft PowerToys - Github
    • A first-ish party tool (maintained by Microsoft Employees) that adds numerous different features
  • OpenRGB / SignalRGB
    • RGB software with the aim to combine RGB ecosystems.
  • Rainmeter
    • Widgets on the desktop!
  • TranslucentTB
    • Customizable taskbar application
  • Winutil
    • Features easy installation of programs via win-net or chocolatey, as well as privacy, feature, and update toggles.

• Other Software:

  • 7Zip
    • The (arguably) best tool for unzipping archived files.
  • CompactGUI
    • Uses compact.exe to transparently compress games with a minimal impact on performance. Though not reccomened unless you have a reason.
  • DNSBenchmark
    • Useful for finding the fastest DNS server for your area, usually Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8) are good enough
  • FreeDownloadManager / FDM
    • Powerful download manager with torrent support and pause/continue downloads
  • Heroic - GitHub
    • Epic Games Store + GOG alternative that allows you to bypass needing the EGS installed to play games. Note: They use a referral link on GOG purchases
  • Playnite
    • Aims to bring all your libraries from different launchers into one (similar to what GOG is trying to do)
  • SetUserFTA
    • Manually set File Type Associations for windows. The only way to forcibly do this on consumer platforms, doesnt work with HTML/PDF associations.
  • UWPHook - GitHub
    • Allows you to add Windows Store apps to your Steam library
  • WizTree
    • Don’t know whats eating up disk space? WizTree read the Master File Table of NTFS drives making it dramatically faster than WinDirStat.
  • VLC
    • One of the best video players out there, all for free.

Disclaimer: None of these resources are owned or operated by us. We are at the mercy of these developers to provide safe downloads. An adblocker is a good idea for browsing the modern web, Ublock Origin is recommended.