How To Setup Your New Gaming Laptop!

So you’ve just got a brand new gaming laptop, but what do you do next for the best experience?

I’ve tested hundreds of gaming laptops on the channel, and this is how we set them up for optimal performance!

The first thing you want to do is play it safe and use your phone to record the laptop’s initial unboxing. This way if there are any unexpected problems, the retailer can’t object and you can prove it arrived damaged.

Check the laptop for any obvious damage that might have happened during shipping.

A brief check for any scratches or physical damage should be enough.

Depending on the model, you might have things like keyboard or screen covers, and maybe protective plastic to peel off.

Connect the included charger to a wall outlet and plug it into the laptop before turning it on.

Many brand new gaming laptops won’t actually turn on for the first time unless you connect the charger, even if the battery is already fully charged.

And the first boot when you power it on for the first time might take a little longer while it does some initial setup tasks, so just be patient.

I like to store everything that came with the laptop in the laptop’s original box and keep it somewhere safe. It’s important to keep the original box the laptop came in because in case you need to send it somewhere for repairs or if you’re selling it in future. As that box has been designed to protect that specific laptop during shipping. Plus if you sell the laptop later on,

having all the original accessories will help increase the resale value.

For a brand new laptop, Windows is going to give you some basic setup options before you get to the desktop. How this looks changes over time as Windows updates, but basically this is where you’ll need to connect to the internet so Windows can get some initial updates, and then create a user account and password. There are

also some privacy settings in here too, and I always just turn everything off.

In the latest version Windows 11, they try to force you to connect to the Internet and use a Microsoft account to log into the laptop instead of using a traditional local account.

In older versions of Windows, this was a lot easier to bypass and make a local account, which limits things like data collection and, I don’t know, just kind of makes it feel like you actually own the laptop and you’re not just logging into some online account that Microsoft can track and see everything. I’m sure those things still happen in Windows to a degree,

but it’s got to be more difficult for them if you’re not using a Microsoft account tied to your identity. Anyway, there are still ways of bypassing this and creating a local account in Windows, but at the moment it’s kind of a game of Whac-A-Mole with Microsoft continually patching the bypasses. So instead of walking through a specific bypass method which will probably be fixed while this video is still online, I’ll just link

to some current bypass methods below that you can use if you do want a local account.

When it’s powered on, you’ll want to check basic things are working, like the screen doesn’t have any dead pixels, all keys on the keyboard work and the touchpad clicks alright.

Ideally for the first time you’re using the laptop, let it charge fully up to 100% before running on battery power.

Once you’re into Windows at the desktop, before doing anything, the first thing I like to do is change the power settings by right clicking the battery icon and selecting power and sleep settings. By default the laptop will turn its screen off and even go to sleep if you leave it

settings. By default the laptop will turn its screen off and even go to sleep if you leave it sitting there running updates, which just makes updating take longer. I always set it to never do anything with the charger connected, but of course, set this how you like.

By default, you can’t hibernate the laptop, you can only put it to sleep, which still drains the battery when you’re not using it, and that’s why the laptop turns on so quickly when you open the lid from having it asleep. Hibernate on the other hand stores everything that’s currently in RAM to the SSD, so you can still pick right up where you left off,

it just takes a little longer to load all that data back into the RAM. With the benefit being that the battery does not drain when you’re not using it. So hibernate is a good option if you’re going to sleep and you want to keep everything open on the laptop for later.

Click start and type “edit power plan”, from here go up one menu to “power options” and select “choose what the power button does”, click the admin prompt to enable hibernate, it should then show in the start menu. Personally I also turn off fast startup, otherwise shutting down isn’t actually a full proper shut down.

Now that the laptop won’t randomly turn itself off while it’s in the middle of a task, the next thing I like to do is Windows updates, as it’s important to make sure that Windows itself is running well before we start messing with the rest of the laptop settings.

You can get to this by either left or right clicking the start button, going to settings, and then Windows update from the menu on the left.

You should be able to check for updates as long as you’ve got an Internet connection.

You might be given the option to restart while other updates are either downloading or still installing, so wait until everything is actually complete before clicking that restart button. Just because the restart button is there doesn’t mean you should press it. Otherwise the downloads and installations that were in progress have to start all over again and the whole thing takes longer than it should.

After the restart, go back into Windows update and check for updates again. Some updates have dependencies, so you can only install update B after you install update A first. And then

maybe once update B is installed, you might be able to then install update C that wasn’t previously available. Basically, some updates have an installation order,

previously available. Basically, some updates have an installation order, so just keep going into the Windows update section and check for updates, install, restart, and repeat that process over and over again until there are no new updates available.

The next thing that I like to do is apply all updates through the Microsoft Store.

This includes various applications that are built into Windows that for some reason Windows update doesn’t handle. And for many gaming laptop brands it also includes the control panel software for managing the laptop itself, so this can be an important step.

It will depend on your laptop and how that brand does things. The control panel software might handle updating itself for example, so after the Windows store updates are done, open the laptop’s control panel software and see if it tries to update. Again depending on the brand of laptop you’ve got, there might be a section within the software for updating it,

so just have a look through the options for something like that. This is something to watch out for, because many laptops have multiple control panel softwares.

Take ASUS for example, the Armory Crate software is used to manage the laptop and gives you the option of updating random ASUS specific bits and pieces here. But then they also have the MyASUS software separately which can be used to update other ASUS specific software or even the BIOS.

And speaking of BIOS updates, these can offer important bug fixes and even performance improvements.

Again depending on your laptop, BIOS updates could be automatic or manual. Some laptops

like those from ASUS typically download their BIOS updates through Windows update. But it may not necessarily be the latest version available through the ASUS website. While others like MSI let you download the BIOS through the website, then you have to stick it on a USB stick and boot into the BIOS and update it manually that way, which is a bit more of a pain.

BIOS updates are more advanced compared to anything else mentioned so far, and they’re also more risky compared to other update types too, should something go wrong. Unfortunately there really isn’t a one size fits all option for BIOS updates,

go wrong. Unfortunately there really isn’t a one size fits all option for BIOS updates, so I’m going to have to refer you to your laptop’s manual for this one. That way you’ll get the detailed information you need and I don’t have to demonstrate it on 10 different laptops.

Honestly for most people, you can probably take a don’t fix it if it’s not broken approach and just not update the BIOS unless you’ve got some problems. Like say for example, you’ve got some sort of random blue screen issue and everything’s up to date. In that case I would definitely update the BIOS to the latest. So although most BIOS updates are pretty straightforward

once you’ve read the documentation, if you’re worried, it’s probably ok to skip. That said,

we’ve updated BIOS on over 200 laptops at this point and not had any problems. Next up is the graphics driver. This step is important for gaming, because graphics drivers often have improvements for the latest games, and there are constant bug fixes with pretty much every release. So this is definitely something you’ll want to update every month or so.

Windows updates might have already installed a newer GPU driver compared to what your laptop originally came with. But when it comes to GPU drivers, in my experience, Windows update tends to play it safe and gives you a fairly old driver, rather than the latest and greatest.

Now gaming laptops have both the integrated graphics and the discrete graphics which are more powerful and what typically run the game, so two different GPUs in the same machine, and we need drivers for both.

So if your laptop has an Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU, you’ll need to install graphics drivers for the Intel integrated graphics and the NVIDIA discrete graphics.

Or if your laptop has an AMD processor then you’ll need AMD’s Radeon graphics drivers, while an all AMD laptop with AMD processor and AMD graphics just needs the Radeon graphics installed.

Personally, I like to keep both the integrated and discrete graphics fully up to date. But in

most cases, I think it’s fine to let Windows update handle the integrated graphics drivers.

But I think it’s definitely worth keeping the discrete graphics drivers up to date, as that just gives you the best experience in the latest games.

All you have to do is download the latest version from either Intel, AMD or Nvidia after choosing the GPU you’ve got. If you’re not sure what you’ve got, you could always double check in either task manager or device manager, or failing that there’s usually an option on the driver website to automatically detect the hardware you’ve got, then you don’t have to worry about installing the wrong thing.

Just make sure that you’re downloading the GPU driver from the official source. In the past, I’ve found if you do a Google search for NVIDIA graphics drivers it might come up with sponsored advertised links that aren’t actually the driver and might just straight up contain malware. So yeah, just make sure you’re in the right place before hitting download, and that would be nvidia.com, intel.com or amd.com.

Whether you’re installing Nvidia or AMD GPU drivers, I always select the option to perform a clean installation to avoid any older versions of stuff sticking around and causing problems. Once the latest graphics drivers have been installed, it’s worth checking that the screen is running at the highest possible resolution at the fastest refresh rate it supports. I do this by

right clicking the desktop and clicking display settings. Scroll down to display resolution and make sure it’s on the highest option, then click advanced display and make sure the refresh rate is as high as it goes. Sometimes a 144Hz panel might be running slower at 60Hz, which would just make gameplay look slower and more blurry than it should.

Unfortunately by default, a lot of laptops come with a bunch of pre-installed garbage, aka bloatware, and more junk processes running in the background just means a slower laptop and worse battery life. So I like to remove as much as possible that’s not required.

Some companies just do this to lower the price of the laptop. For example, an antivirus company might pay a laptop brand to have their antivirus software installed on the laptop when you buy it, in the hopes you’ll fall for their scare tactics and start paying them a monthly subscription. In my opinion, it’s your machine that you’ve paid for with your own money,

subscription. In my opinion, it’s your machine that you’ve paid for with your own money, so you should have all the programs that you want and none of the trash.

To see what’s installed, right click the start icon and click installed apps. You can scroll through and uninstall anything you don’t want.

If you’re not sure what something is or if it’s required, Google search it first, it might be an important driver or something. Most garbage like antivirus software will be pretty obvious with well known names. Just search for stuff like Norton or McAfee.

Honestly, I don’t think third party antivirus software is needed for most people with some basic common sense. Before going full time on this YouTube channel, I used to work in security as a penetration tester. And more often than not, it was vulnerabilities in antivirus software that gave me access to a system. It’s just one more attack

surface that can be targeted and software that you have to keep up to date. Even if

we put aside the fact that antivirus software uses moe resources so it can constantly scan all the files you’re opening which also typically slows down performance in games.

I really think that these days the built-in Windows defender is good enough for most people, and that’s already there by default. I’d only really consider third party antivirus software if the compute is for someone that doesn’t really know what they’re doing, like my parents for example. Maybe that extra bit of bloat might keep them a bit safer. Kind of like training wheels for laptops I guess.

safer. Kind of like training wheels for laptops I guess.

Anyway, once you’ve decided which apps to keep, you can decide whether they load up automatically during startup. Just because you might want an app like Spotify installed doesn’t mean you want

during startup. Just because you might want an app like Spotify installed doesn’t mean you want it to load up every time you turn the computer on. Loading more apps at startup increases total boot time, so the amount of time before the computer is ready and logged in and you can actually start doing things. Because more stuff running in the background just uses more resources,

doing things. Because more stuff running in the background just uses more resources, which then leads to worse battery life if you don’t have the charger connected.

Right click the start button, select settings, then Apps from the menu on the left and choose startup. Then just simply toggle different apps on or off as you prefer. This doesn’t actually remove

startup. Then just simply toggle different apps on or off as you prefer. This doesn’t actually remove the app or stop it working, it just stops it from loading up automatically at boot.

Ultimately the best way to ensure there’s no bloatware on your new laptop is to do a fresh install of Windows. Well, I guess I should say to get the least amount of third party bloat, because Windows itself is pretty bloated these days… Anyway, before installing a fresh version of Windows you need to get the Windows key off your existing laptop,

then you can use that to activate Windows with your fresh install. Although I think if you logged into the laptop with a Microsoft account and then log back into that later on the same hardware it might automatically do it. But still, I like to manually back it up just in case. Anyway a

fresh install of Windows is what I personally do on my laptops, but it is a little more advanced compared to just using the version of Windows that shipped with the laptop, because that one is ready to go. And you’ll have to do some extra things with a fresh install like manually download the control panel software for the laptop at a minimum. At least if you want to control things

like performance modes and fan noise. Oh, and of course that sweet sweet RGB lighting.

Now although I personally use a fresh install of Windows, just because I’m a little paranoid and I’d prefer everything to be how Microsoft intended than ASUS or Lenovo or whoever, when it comes to the gaming laptops we review on this channel, we always use the default Windows that came with it and just update all the apps and drivers within. Because we assume

that’s what most people are going to do, and honestly it does make sense for most people, so we want to get that same experience when testing. That said, we do manually uninstall any third party antivirus for all the reasons just discussed.

Something else we do is disable core isolation in Windows, which is on by default.

This is an advanced security feature that Windows 11 enables by default with a fresh install, but honestly unless you’re a target of the NSA or something and downloading dodgy stuff, for most gamers you can get a decent speed boost in games by turning this off.

The best way to find this is to click on start and just start typing “core isolation”.

You want to turn off the memory integrity option and reboot to complete the process.

When it comes to personalization, there’s almost an unlimited list of things you can customize. Of course everything here will come down to personal preference,

customize. Of course everything here will come down to personal preference, but these are a few things you might want to consider changing.

You can turn on dark mode, which is particularly useful if you’ve got an OLED screen, set a custom wallpaper and lock screen, and set any RGB lighting to your preference. I also remove the random taskbar icons that Windows likes to stick

your preference. I also remove the random taskbar icons that Windows likes to stick there by default to keep things clean. Likewise you also might want to remove, or even add desktop icons. By default the recycle bin can’t be removed from the desktop, you control it through personalization, themes and then desktop icon settings.

As for browsers, Microsoft’s Edge isn’t as bad as it used to be given it is based on Chromium, but I’m already deep into Firefox and Chrome, so I’m going to keep using those, and you might want to install a custom browser.

We all love free games, so it’s worth checking if your new laptop came with any offers. It’s

very common for new gaming laptops these days to give you a 3 month free trial of gamepass, just open the Microsoft store and there’s usually a pop up. Or check under library, then the included with device tab. Some laptop brands might have promotions where they give you a key for a specific game if you bought their laptop. Like I bought

an HP Victus to review for example and it came with Battlefield 6. So check in the box for details on that. The last time that happened to me they ended up emailing me the details and it was really easy to activate. Usually you only get a certain amount of time to activate the keys, so don’t forget about it and miss out on your free game.

If your laptop supports Windows Hello, either with a fingerprint or face scan, it’s worth setting up as a quick and easy way to log into your laptop securely. If you’re not sure whether your laptop supports these features, just click start and start typing “Windows Hello”, and then in here you’ll see if a fingerprint scanner or infrared camera are connected.

At this point, you’re pretty much ready to go and start gaming. If you want, you could also do more advanced testing like running benchmarks to compare your laptop against similarly specced laptops to make sure things are performing as they should.

Generally I find free tools like 3DMark or Cinebench pretty good to give you a rough overall score for comparing, and we test both of those in our laptop reviews, so if you’ve bought a laptop with the same specs as one we’ve tested, you can compare against that.

Just don’t be too surprised if your laptop is 5% above or below someone else with the same specs. And of course, comparing your laptop to someone else's even though they have the same CPU

specs. And of course, comparing your laptop to someone else's even though they have the same CPU and GPU could be completely different, because each laptop might have different power limits, and the amount of power dictates performance, rather than the name of the GPU listed on the spec sheet. You might have an RTX 5060 that runs at 80 watts, while someone else might have a 5060

spec sheet. You might have an RTX 5060 that runs at 80 watts, while someone else might have a 5060 that runs at 115 watts, and more power equals more performance, so that will result in a noticeable difference in games. Even though on the spec sheet both laptops have the same GPU inside.

Some people also like to run a stress test to check out temperatures, and that can be useful just to confirm the cooler is correctly connected to everything, mistakes do happen during assembly.

Personally, I never bother doing stress tests on any of my own laptops. At this point I just install the apps that I plan on using and use the laptop as I normally would. If there’s

any sort of obvious problem, like the laptop can’t handle the workload I’m trying to run, then yeah I’ll investigate further. But I’m not going to make myself paranoid about temperatures by running a heavy stress test and then being surprised when I see high temps. The fact is, laptop CPUs and GPUs get hot when running in such a cramped space. It is what it is, to some degree

you’ve just kind of got to embrace it. These chips are designed to run hot for long periods of time, so I don’t worry about it too much. Just use the laptop and have a good time. If it’s not performing well in games it’ll probably be pretty obvious with stuttering and unplayable framerates.

If you want to get even more out of your gaming laptop check out my detailed upgrade guide next, where I show you how to upgrade every single component inside your laptop.