Is It Worth It to Overclock My Monitor?

Your display’s refresh rate is controlled by the driver software controlling your graphics card.

Most modern graphics cards can refresh faster than 60 Hz, but 60 Hz is the default setting.

Windows Start menu with the AMD Radeon Settings app highlighted

That means overclocking your monitor only requires a small change to its controls.

How you change it depends on the brand of your graphics card.

How Do I Enable Overclocking My Monitor?

Custom resolution in AMD settings app with Create highlighted

You’ll need tocheck your graphics cardmodel first.

From here, you’ll be able to overclock your monitor if you want to.

snag the Start menu on your machine and jot down the model of your graphics card.

Adjusting resolution in AMD settings app with Refresh Rate and Save highlighted

You should see a configs app appear in the menu of available apps.

Select this configs app to launch it.

Your graphics card software should have a Display area to see and adjust display tweaks.

Screenshot of game settings page in AMD Settings app

Find the display you want to modify.

Find the Refresh Rate (Hz) setting and adjust this up to 75 Hz.

SelectSavewhen you’re done for your new options to take effect.

Selecting your display in CRU with options highlighted

Can you overclock a 60 Hz monitor to 120 Hz?

Monitors are manufactured to handle a maximum refresh rate.

Some graphics card software lets you customize display prefs by applications.

Adjusting resolution in CRU with options highlighted

There is often even a gaming section where you select specific games to configure custom display options.

It means it’s possible for you to overclock your monitor only while you’re playing particular games.

Once you’ve downloaded the CRU ZIP file, extract the contents to your PC.

Restarting graphics driver with Run as Administrator highlighted

bring up the extracted folder and run CRU.exe as administrator.

Under the Standard resolutions pane, select theAddbutton.

In the pop-up window, choose the resolution you want to overclock and adjust theRefresh ratefield.

Changing display to 75 hz with refresh rates highlighted

SelectOKon the main window to close CRU.exe.

Your screens will blank out a few times.

When they return, go for the Start menu, typeSettings, and select theSettings app.

SelectDisplayin the left menu and selectAdvanced display settingsin the right pane.

You should now see the refresh rate higher than 60 Hz that you added using the CRU app.

Select this to overclock your monitor.

The easiest way is todownload Intel Performance Maximizer, and then launch and trigger the software.

Load into your BIOS, tweak your hardware functions, and enable theXMPoption.

Save and power cycle your gear to see if your changes took effect.

check that theMaximum GPU Temperaturein MSI Afterburners monitoring window is at a safe level.