104 PCWorld JULY 2020HERE’S HOW CHEAP & FREE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR PC FASTER
is notorious for slowing
down over time. If
you’ve never refreshed
your PC with a fresh
Windows install, now’s
the time to do it.
Back up all your
critical system data,
either by cobbling
together native
Windows tools (go.
pcworld.com/ntwn) or
investing in a
comprehensive
Windows backup
program (go.pcworld.com/wbkp; our
current favorite is the superb Acronis True
Image [go.pcworld.com/tm20]). Make sure
you have your Windows product key in
hand—Belarc Advisor (go.pcworld.com/
blad) can help if need be—and follow this
guide (go.pcworld.com/rein) to slap a fresh,
factory-new copy of Windows on your
computer. (The article’s a few years old, but
the info’s still good.) Be warned: If you’re
using a manufacturer-supplied recovery disk,
you’ll need to clean all the preinstalled
bloatware off your machine after reinstalling
Windows.- OVERCLOCK!
Don’t have money for new gear?
Overclocking—using software to manually
speed up the clock speeds of your
hardware—lets you get more out of what you
already have, though most laptops lock
down the capability. Assuming your desktop
PC has proper cooling and a CPU that’s
capable of overclocking (Intel limits it to
chips with a “K” designator at the end),
boosting your processor and graphics card’s
clock speeds can have a noticeable effect on
your PC’s performance.
Boosting your computer processor is a
manual endeavor, and our guide to
overclocking your CPU (go.pcworld.com/
ocpu) can walk you through each step. It’s
easier on modern GeForce and Radeon
graphics cards. You can choose to apply an
automatic overclock to your GPU in the
Wattman section of AMD’s Radeon Settings
tool, and many third-party apps designed to
manage GeForce hardware include a similar5.