You may have one of the best gaming CPUs, and you may have been lucky enough to score one of the best graphics cards, but hardware is only half the battle with your gaming PC. To take your gaming PC to the next level, you need to pair all of that powerful hardware with equally powerful software.

Over my years of building and tweaking PCs, I've downloaded hundreds of utilities, most of which I opened once and never touched again. A build later and a couple of installs wiser, I have a condensed list of applications that I couldn't imagine using my PC without. I don't want to bloat your PC with software you won't use, but for most PC gamers, you'll find at least some utility on this list.

6 Asus GPUTweak III

Make your GPU work for you

There are a handful of great GPU utilities you can install, from MSI Afterburner to EVGA Precision X1, but I use Asus' GPUTweak III personally. The one you pick largely comes down to what interface you like most, as most GPU utilities provide the same core functionality of automatic overclocking, fan management, and power sliders. I gravitate to GPUTweak because the core interface is simple for dialing in a quick overclock or undervolt, and you can tie different OC profiles to different applications.

I'm not here to advocate you install GPUTweak in particular, but you should install a GPU utility. The obvious reason is to overclock your GPU, though there isn't a big performance advantage with most modern GPUs. I actually use GPUTweak to undervolt and power limit my GPU. I have a slight undervolt running at all times, and I tie a power limit to the less demanding games I play to keep my small form factor (SFF) PC running cool and quiet -- most recently, Windblown and Nine Sols.

Although most cards won't see a huge benefit from overclocking, there are some small performance advantages you can find if you mess around with your power limits and memory clock. Regardless if you're overclocking, undervolting, power limiting, or just need to set a fan curve, you should have a GPU utility installed.

5 CapFrameX

Everything you need for performance capture

There are a lot of ways to benchmark your PC and monitor your performance in games, but none of them come close to CapFrameX. It's an all-in-one tool for monitoring, recording, and reporting the performance of your PC, and it's a great tool to have around if you care about digging into your PC's performance.

CapFrameX is built on the back of two open-source tools. The first is PresentMon, which is the industry-standard performance capture tool that's used by AMD's OCAT and Nvidia's FrameView. The second is RivaTuner Statistics Servers, or RTSS, which provides a customizable, real-time performance overlay when you're playing games. You could get RTSS and a performance monitoring tool like FrameView separately, but it's everything that CapFrameX does around these two programs that makes it special.

Rather than dumping your performance into a spreadsheet, CapFrameX manages all of your performance capture in the app (don't worry, you can export and move a CSV around if you want). You can analyze individual entries, including frame-time charts and sensor data. You can analyze power metrics, from PCIe slot power to ATX power to total system power. You can group multiple entries into a report, fit with the metrics you want to keep, and plot them on a chart within the app. And as if that weren't enough, you can sync your records across multiple systems through the cloud.

The secret power of CapFrameX is taking all of these disparate tools and functions and putting them in a single, easy-to-use spot. It allows you not only to track metrics in your PC in real-time, but also take that data and make it into something digestible in a way that more powerful tracking utilities like HWInfo can't.

4 WinDirStat

Never sweat about disk space again

I'm always worried about the storage space in my PC, and I'd wager that I'm not alone. I have my games in Steam sorted by how much space they take up on my hard drive, and I'm constantly battling for free space whenever the next AAA game with a 150GB install size drops. WinDirStat is a visual drive analyzer that allows you to see what's stored on your hard drive or SSD, and it lays out your data in blocks that are sized to show how much space they take up on your disk.

I'm not nearly as organized on my PC as I should be, so I'm constantly downloading files and placing them in random folders, leaning heavily on Recent tab in File Explorer to find what I need -- feel free to shame me. Every few months, I pop into WinDirStat to look at the drives in my PC, seeing how seemingly small files have added up in size throughout the various folders I have on my PC. Over the years, I've probably deleted terabytes of forgotten files that wouldn't have resurfaced without WinDirStat.

You won't use the app all the time, but it's a lifesaver when you go to install a new game and realize you need to free up some disk space. You can select any portion of the visual map and immediately open that location in File Explorer, which allows you to clean up your drive in a matter of minutes, not hours.

3 EmuDeck

More than just an emulation configuration engine

No, EmuDeck isn't just for your Steam Deck. There's a Windows installer, too, and although it's focused on handhelds like the ROG Ally X, I use it on my desktop, too. If you aren't familiar, EmuDeck is a one-stop-shop for setting up emulation on your PC. It installs just about every emulator you could want, creates a folder structure to store your games and BIOS files, and allows you to export your emulation library to Steam as non-Steam apps in a single click.

That's what you get for free, and that alone is enough to justify installing EmuDeck for emulation fans. I store my games, BIOS files, and saves on a micro SD card that I can transfer between my ROG Ally X and desktop, giving me a pick-up-and-play experience regardless of what platform I want to play on.

This article is focused on free apps, and EmuDeck falls into that category. However, I subscribe to the EmuDeck Patreon to unlock some exclusive features, and if you end up using the app a lot, I suggest you do, too. The two big features you get out of subscribing are cloud saves, which automatically sync your saves with your cloud storage service of choice, and Game Mode. Game Mode is a huge addition if you have an HTPC. It's a shell command that launches straight into Steam Big Picture mode when you launch your PC, so you don't need to mess with a keyboard and mouse.

2 Borderless Gaming

Inject the best way to play in any game

Borderless Gaming has been around for a decade -- time flies -- but I still use it all the time. The app is available on Steam for $7, but the developer maintains a GitHub page where you can download older versions of the app for free. The name basically tells you everything you need to know. It forces games that either have a broken or nonexistent borderless fullscreen setting to run in borderless fullscreen mode.

You don't need Borderless Gaming in every game, but it's a lifesaver when you do. That's particularly true if you play older games -- DirectX 9 and back -- where you won't commonly find a borderless option, and an Alt+Tab in fullscreen mode could represent a game crash. Beyond that, Borderless Gaming comes with some goodies that are useful in games that have a borderless setting, such as locking or hiding your cursor and muting the game when it's in the background.

I originally installed Borderless Gaming to play Dark Souls II, and I haven't looked back since. It runs in the background, and I have it hooked into a handful of games where it's useful to automatically kick in when I boot them up.

1 Special K

The one utility any PC gamer can find a use for

Special K is magic, and I struggle to imagine ever using my PC without it. It's dubbed the "Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming," and for good reason. It does a little bit of everything. You can inject HDR into games that don't normally support it, or tweak the HDR with dense settings not available in most games. You can override the DLSS model you're using and force DLAA, as well as change Nvidia Reflex and DirectStorage settings. You can limit controller and audio settings to different displays, allowing two people to play off the same PC at once. I'm just barely scratching the surface here, too.

Special K is a toolbox, and as you rifle through its dense settings, you'll find a use for it in just about every game you play. Beyond all the game-agnostic settings, Special K includes specific optimizations for dozens of games -- and that list is constantly growing. For instance, I used Special K in Elden Ring to fix the HDR in the game, unlock the frame rate, and fix a CPU scheduling issue that could lead to stutters. That's a lot of functionality for one app in one game, and there's so much more you can do elsewhere.

You have a lot of flexibility with Special K, and the app is really what you make of it. Regardless of whether you only interact with a few of its features, or you leverage all of them, you should have Special K installed on your PC.

Something for everyone

You may not need all the apps on this list, but I have all of them installed on my PC. Most of the options here serve multiple functions, allowing me to trim down on the bloat of several applications working together to accomplish one goal. With flexible utilities like Special K and CapFrameX, I've actually shaved a lot of bloat from my PC, all while retaining powerful utilities that I use constantly.