|
PC HDR gaming starting guide.
HDR can be a scary and confusing rabbit hole. There are various guides scattered throughout the internet and it's not easy to make sense of that mess. Roadblocks to good HDR scare a lot of people, so they end up never using a major feature of displays they paid money for. This is why I'm trying to make this centralized and (relatively) simplified guide. It's meant for new HDR users, but might have tips for those who already familiar with it. This guide is made with Windows 11 in mind. If you're on Windows 10 and use HDR, I'd advise you to upgrade. Don't be scared by the wall of text below, you don't actually need to read it all! This post compiles all (that I'm aware of) available options for HDR in one place, for all situations and preferences, as well as various troubleshooting tips and explanations. It's not formatted very well, but I'll try to make it less confusing. The post is split into sections, just scroll through it and find what you need to know. So what is HDR and why should I use that? In simple terms, High Dynamic Range allows your display to show significantly wider range of colors and brightness. That range allows both bright and dark parts of the image to show details and contrast from each other, closer to how they do in real life. A lightbulb in the dark room shines very bright, while everything around is pitch black, bright clouds show every detail, neon lights emit colorful purple light. One of the main benefits of HDR is its ability to properly show very bright objects (called "highlights"). SDR has a very limited range of brightness, and when it tries to display something very bright (sun, clouds, lightbulb, fire or maybe a bright reflection) it shows a blob of white instead. All details and color disappear. This is called clipping. If you only ever saw SDR, you probably don't notice that at all. Once you enable HDR, you'll see just how much details are gone in SDR. Example of SDR clipping highlight detail in Deus Ex Mankind Divided (2016) In summary, think of SDR as the baseline quality compromise for everyone, and HDR as an image upgrade for more capable displays. Properly implemented HDR will always look better than SDR. Good HDR will drastically improve the game's presentation, and is one of the most transformative experiences OLED and MiniLED offer. How do I set it up? Don't worry, most of the time it's pretty simple. The main difference from SDR, is that HDR needs the content to support it. Out of the box it's supported in many games from the last ~10 years but isn't always implemented well. You will have to enable it in-game and set it up, sometimes using mods to improve it. With mods and tweaks it can be used in most games, regardless of age. I want to mess around as little as possible, can you ELI5? Msny games still release with messed up HDR implementations, due to mistakes from the developers and the lack of knowladge/experience/resources. While the games adapted HDR for rendering 20+ years ago, they olny started outputing HDR image around 2016-2017. Due to various factors, native HDR support is still treated as an afterthought, so a lot of games still come out with half-baked HDR. HDR mods is the go-to for the best HDR and require no effort. Someone already went in and did everything for you. Use RenoDX and Luma for all available games (the list is constantly expanding). If a game already has native HDR that the mod fixes, leave it on unless the specific mod asks you to turn it off. No need to change any settings beyond your peak brightness and game/UI brightness to preference. Everything else is already set up (but you can customize the image to your liking with sliders). Reshade HDR Installer is an automatic mod manager for RenoDX and Luma that will scan your games and show which ones have mods available and offers to install them. For games without available mods or multiplayer games with anti-cheat: enable native HDR if it's available. Set your peak brightness if offered, and brightness ("paper white"). Set paper white/game brightness to taste, but not too close to peak. Between 80-300 nits is generally the best range. If the game doesn't offer value in nits and has some other slider (1-10, 1-100, 0-1), just set the comfortable brightness for you. If native HDR looks off, but there aren't mods: Check out HDR Gaming Database for the best settings for your game. Also check up on simple HDR fixes, they'll cover most problems you may have. If the HDR is absent, mods aren't available: Use RTX HDR (only available to Nvidia). You can also just use Windows AutoHDR, but it's a little washed out and not as good as other options. If you're willing to go a little further, Special K is another very simple option. Simply enabling scRGB 16 bit at preset 0 is already enough for good HDR. If you need more detailed instructions on these, they're below. Windows makes SDR content washed out in HDR mode. Use HDR mode for HDR only, Toggle HDR with Win+Alt+B before launching HDR content. AutoActions will do that for your chosen games or apps. Special K, Display Commander or Playnite also offer auto toggling functionality. Display OSD settings vary a lot, but basic general recommendations are: Use HDR 400/500 True Black, Console mode or HGIG for maximum accuracy. Use Gaming HDR, Peak 1000/1500 or Dynamic Tone Mapping for brighter and punchier, but not so accurate image. Beware that higher peak brightness modes on OLED will dim the image in brighter scenes with Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). If you don't like the look of that, consider using True Black. I've heard that PC HDR is worse than on consoles. Is that true? No, that's just a popular myth. Windows handles native HDR exactly as consoles do. The HDR implementations are the same across platforms, with rare exceptions. The reason why it's so widely circulated is because most people use consoles with TVs, and they have significantly better HDR than monitors. Consoles also can toggle HDR automatically, while Windows needs third party apps to do it. If anything, PC is a better option for HDR. If the game ships with broken HDR on consoles, there's very little you can do about it, but on PC it can be fixed or even added if missing. Besides that, even with automatic toggling you still won't get automatic HDR experience on consoles, as many games ignore system-wide calibration and need to be set up individually. Won't HDR burn your retinas and cause eye damage? It's way too bright! That's not true at all. Going outside exposes you to much more light than any current display can show in HDR. It won't cause any eye-damage, but it can cause some eye strain at first, especially in a pitch black room. Your eyes are simply not used to seeing something that bright on a display, and need time to adjust. If even after some time your eyes still get fatigued, consider adding a little ambient lighting to the room. Even a simple table lamp facing a wall or behind the monitor is a good temporary solution. If it's too bright for you, consider reducing game brightness/paper white - but not peak. This will bring down the average brightness without harming dynamic range or taking away details. Display-side HDR settings On your TV or monitor you'll be presented with different HDR modes. Settings vary heavily on each manufacturer, so I can't explain all of them properly. Here's the general explanation: The things these settings mainly affect are peak brightness, tone mapping and EOTF accuracy. Peak brightness - self explanatory. Tone mapping - Compressing peak brightness to fit your display's peak. Tone mapping can be done by the source content (the game itself), or the display. Tone mapping only by the source is the most accurate to the creator's intent. Display tone mapping can alter the image in ways not intended, make it brighter and punchier, but at the cost of accuracy. EOTF tracking - how accurate your display is in terms of brightness. Perfect EOTF tracking means that the display outputs the exact brightness the content is asking for, without dimming or over brightening. Reviews like RTINGS or sometimes Youtube are a good place to find EOTF accuracy measurements. It's a simple graph with the yellow and gray lines. The more aligned they are, the more accurate display is. TVs: Dynamic Tone Mapping - Tone mapping will be done dynamically on your TV on top of tone mapping done by the game. It's the least accurate to the creator's intent, but can make the game brighter and punchier, so some people prefer how it looks, especially in brightly lit rooms or during daytime. Bad accuracy, for obvious reasons. DTM off/Static Tone Mapping - TV still does tone mapping, but now only applies a fixed curve, usually just to highlights (to avoid clipping). Mixed accuracy for highlights. Not desirable for games. as you generally want to avoid double tone mapping. HGIG - minimizes any tone mapping done by your TV to get the most accurate image possible. The tonemapping will be handled entirely by the game, without any interference from the TV. May be called differently on some TVs (e.g on Samsung TVs it's "Game HDR Basic", combined with "Tone Mapping Static"). If you can't find it easily, look up how to enable it on your TV. The best accuracy. You may have heard about games needing "HGIG support" to work with it. This is another myth! All games out there equaly "support" HGIG. HGIG isn't a different format or some special tech. It's a simple setting that disables all tone mapping on your TV, in favour of using only game's own tone mapping. Monitors: Monitors aren't as clear about their HDR setings and modes. I can only give you a general guidance, but things can change a lot between models. If possible, look at reviews evaluating diffent settings in terms of accuracy, tone mapping and brightness. The gist of it is this: HDR/DisplayHDR400/500/HDR True Black - the lowest peak brightness, the best EOTF accuracy (Usually acts like HGIG). Highlights don't "pop" as much, but the peak brightness stays consistent regardless of what's on screen. Peak 1000 - kind of a wildcard mode. It lets the peak brightness get to ~1000 nits, making highlights far more impactful. Bad accuracy. As the average scene brightness increases, the ABL (Automaitc Brightness Limiter) kicks in and reduces the overall brightness. Sometimes the ABL is so aggressive, that in bright daytime scenes True Black gets brighter than Peak 1000. How usable it is greatly depends on the model, reviews are a good place to see how it performs. Keep in mind, on some models Peak 1000 isn't the only mode that unlocks peak brightness. Great for darker games, not great for brighter ones. Gaming/Game HDR - differing peak brightness, acts similar to dynamic tone mapping, worse accuracy. This mode differs between models, but usually it tries to "juice up" the image with dynamic brightness boosts and additional saturation. Can potentially cause highlights to clip. Console HDR - acts like HGIG, prevents the monitor from tone mapping to get the most accurate picture. differing peak brightness (usually medium-high), great EOTF accuracy. How to gauge which modes do tone mapping on my model? Reviews are a good place to find this information. Find EOTF graphs of different modes and look at their top parts. Sharp stop at the top means no tone mapping Slow roll-off means the monitor does tone mapping Summary and recomendations: for the most accuracy enable HGIG on TVs, and HGIG-like modes on monitors (Console, True Black, Source Tone Map). For additional "punch" and brightness boost, but worse accuracy use Dynamic tone mapping on TVs and Gaming HDR on monitors. For the most impactul highlights in darker scenes enable Peak 1000. I have Dolby Vision, is it worth using it for gaming? In my opinion, no. It's not worth bothering with outside of some rare usecases. Basically, Dolby Vision is PC HDR stereotypes, but actually made real. Windows 11 Dolby Vision support is awful and you need to jump through hoops to make it work properly. There's only a handful of games with native DV support (Battlefield 1, Mass Effect Andromeda, NFS Heat, and even there it doesn't make a big difference. Enabling it will make Windows place all HDR10 content in DV container, which can mess with accuracy. Using it for movies is far more warranted, since there's a lot more support for it. But getting them to really work on PC is a whole different can of worms. Windows 11 HDR calibration Go to System -> Display -> HDR. Enable HDR and use HDR calibration tool. This will let Windows know the peak brightness of your display. Technically, you don't need to do this. Displays themselves already report it to Windows through EDID, which you can see in advanced display settings, but the values they report aren't always accurate. Some games, RenoDX/Luma, RTX HDR and AutoHDR will use that to automatically set the peak brightness. Native HDR in most games still ignores that. Windows HDR always needs to be ON for any kind of HDR! Tone mapping settings and HDR modes affect the peak brightness you get! You'll need a different profile for each setting, if you switch between them. If your display does tone mapping (doesn't have HGIG or HGIG-like mode), it will tonemap the test pattern, changing the results: You can: Follow the calibration instructions to trust your display's tone mapping (preferred). Input peak 10% peak brightness from trusted reviews like RTINGS of TFTCentral (if the results you get seem way off). LG monitor users (because this gets asked often): Clipping point in the calibration can be much lower on high peak brightness settings (e.g. 700 nits, when it should be 1000+). This is completely normal, set it there and use that as your peak brightness value. This is due to how LG handles brightness boost. After 2000 nits, HDR calibration tool will start reporting much higher values! If your TV/Monitor is brighter than 2000 nits, use ColorControl to manually set the correct peak brightness in your color profile. Important Windows 24H2/25H2 notice: Currently (Jan 2026) there's still a bug in Windows that sometimes causes calibrated profiles not to load properly upon PC restart. You can notice this when values in Advanced display settings or RTX HDR sliders fall back to default EDID values. To forcefully load the profiles simply open Settings -> System -> Display once. Alternative to Windows HDR calibration - Editing peak brightness directly in EDID (Advanced): Alternatively to Windows HDR calibration you can edit peak brightness directly in EDID, using CRU (Custom Resolution Utility). Use this if you're experiencing issues with it, or color profiles created. Download and unpack CRU. Run CRU.exe as admin. Select your display and in extension blocks double click CTA-861. Double click HDR static metadata. Set both max frame-avg and max luminance to your desired peak brightness (frame average doesn't matter, so you can set it to the same value). The values are NOT in nits, but code values (CV) between 0-255. The formula to calculate the code value is Luminance value = 50*2^(CV/32). Easiest way to find your value without doing math is googling 50*(2^(CV/32) , Google calculator will give you the value in nits. For example 50*(2^(100/32) is 436. Meaning for 436 nits is 100. 50*(2^(139/32) is 1015, meaning 139 is 1015 nits, and so on. If anything goes wrong, you can revert changes by running reset-all.exe in CRU folder. Windows SDR brightness slider values: 0 starts at 80 nits. Each 5 points on the slider add 20 nits. SDR brightness slider value Value in nits 0 80 nits 5 100 nits 10 120 nits 15 140 nits 23 172 nits 31 204 nits 50 (default) 280 nits 80 400 nits 100 480 nits I enabled HDR and everything in Windows looks washed out! Windows desktop, browsers, apps and such are all SDR. Majority of monitors are calibrated to gamma 2.2 in SDR, and that's what most SDR content expects as well. However, when you enable HDR in Windows, it uses piecewise sRGB gamma instead. Even though they match for most of the time, sRGB gets brighter near black. This is why content made for 2.2 is shown with sRGB looks washed out. If you want to know more. This doesn't affect HDR content, just SDR. How to fix that? Option 1 (recommended): Enable HDR only for HDR content, disable for general desktop use. Use Win+Alt+B shortcut to toggle HDR manually or AutoActions to choose the list of apps where it will be toggled automatically. Playnite offers the same functionality as well. Option 2 (workaround): Use the dedicated color profile that forces 2.2 gamma. However, it's important to note that this profile lowers the blacks everywhere. This will fix how SDR content is displayed, but will result in black crush in HDR. So you'll have to switch to a normal color profile before launching an HDR game. You'll still have to toggle something between SDR and HDR content. There is a handy AutoHotKey script that adds quick hotkeys to momentarily change back-and-forth between the two. I recommend using it, if you go with this option. Option 3 (lazy): Just leave HDR on and get used to SDR looking off. I know quite a few people that leave HDR enabled and don't mind how SDR content looks. If it doesn't bother you that much, you can just leave HDR on. I'd recommend lowering SDR brightness slider located in the Windows HDR settings to make it look better and the 2.2/sRGB mismatch less perceptible. HDR looks dull and undersaturated! Colors don't pop! What most likely happened is, your SDR looks wrong. While HDR can make use of more vivid colors, it's also supposed to show accurate colors, without any extra saturation. SDR is meant for a limited sRGB color space, but sometimes your display won't limit itself to it, and use full panel capabilities for SDR. This will result in drastically oversaturated colors. So when HDR shows you how they're supposed to look, it can be very jarring (especially when you toggle between SDR/HDR). Solution: Clamp your color space to sRGB for SDR. You can do that by enabling Automatically manage colors for apps in System -> Display -> Color Management. Alternatively you can enable sRGB mode on your monitor/TV. Don't do both! ACM is Windows-side sRGB emulation, it shouldn't be paired with sRGB on the display, or it will under saturate. Also beware that some monitors (like Alienware) can apply sRGB gamma when sRGB mode is selected (in that case just use Windows ACM). Alternative solution, if you really like saturated colors: First off, I'd still advise you to clamp the color space for a few days and let your eyes adjust to neutral colors. They will look very dull, and then suddenly they will look normal. After that you won't be able to look at unclamped SDR ever again. If you tried sRGB and it really isn't for you, and you really want more saturated colors in HDR, you have some options to do that: Increase the saturation slider in Windows HDR calibration. Most of the HDR methods below either offer saturation sliders (most RenoDX mods, RTX HDR, SpecialK, Reshade) or oversaturate by default (Win11 AutoHDR). I recommend against vibrance/saturation sliders in GPU drivers. They will increase for both SDR and HDR, and if your SDR is already unclamped it will only worsen the situation. But if you still decided on doing that, don't go past extra ~5-10%. Be careful with increasing saturation. As a rule of thumb, stop once serious hue shifting starts. A great indicator is human skin - once it starts turning red, that's your cue to stop and tone it down a bit. HDR isn't very bright! Isn't HDR all about brighter image? No, not really. HDR is about higher difference between dark and bright. If everything was bright, there would be little difference. It's about only making appropriate things bright, which are highlights. Everything else will be just as bright as SDR. HDR is suited for darker viewing environments, and if the sun is blasting right on your glossy TV, it's not going to look good. If you use HDR during the day and it looks way to dim, feel free to increase paper white/game brightness. Don't go nuts with it, or you'll start lowering the dynamic range, lessening the impact of HDR. About Nvidia Control Panel/App color settings: Don't touch them. All you have to do there is to set dynamic range to Full for the correct output. Brightness/Contrast/Gamma/Hue sliders should be left alone at default values. They can and will mess up your image, causing black crush, highlight clipping and generally a deep fried image. You should only ever touch them if you know exactly what you're doing that for. Setting up games While for a long time good HDR support in games was very limited and poor, things have recently got a lot better. Now you can get a great HDR in almost every game, even older ones. And the best part, it now doesn't require messing with Reshade for 3 hours, everyone can do it. Understanding how game HDR settings work The two most important settings you'll have to set in HDR games are peak brightness and paper white. Peak brightness is the peak HDR brightness. Value too high will start clipping highlights, losing detail. Game brightness/"Paper white" is the normal brightness, set to your preference. Don't set to close to peak, as it acts sort of like an SDR/HDR separating point, with everything below PW being given to SDR. Between 80-300 nits is generally considered a good range. In games can be called differently. Brightness, game brightness, paper white, something in that direction. There are also cases where "paper white" in-game setting only controls UI brightness. 1. Native HDR support Before using native HDR, check if HDR mods (RenoDX or Luma) are available for the game. They will always get better results and don't need any effort to install or set up. See if the game has HDR. Most often it will have HDR toggle in the settings, but it might not (some games only show the option if HDR was enabled before launching, some force HDR automatically, etc.) You can find that by looking at the Steam store page (HDR available tag) or this list on PCGamingWIki). I also recommend you to check out HDR gaming database. It lists possible issues and settings recommendations in various games. Set up the HDR in the game. Most importantly, set your peak brightness and paper white (average brightness). That's it, you can play the game. If native HDR looks bad, washed out or blown out, you need to fix it with mods. 1.5. Simple tweaks to native HDR: Fixing the washed out look and clipping: Native HDR may also look washed out due to gamma mismatch. HDR gaming database is a good to place to find out if it's present in the game. Gamma mismatch is the number 1 culprit behind washed out HDR. It happens when developers target a lighter sRGB gamma in SDR, but do that on monitors calibrated to gamma 2.2. Because of that the game, unknowingly to the developers, receives a contrast boost and deeper shadows in SDR. This mistake goes unnoticed because basically all consumer monitors are 2.2 gamma as well. HDR fixes this error from the devs and undoes the gamma mismatch, resulting in a more washed out look then the developers intended. Diablo IV (2023) with gamma mismatch. Luckily, fixing this is very simple: Install ReShade and select Lillium's HDR shaders during the installation. You'll need hdrblack_floor_fix shader. Launch the game and enable this shader. Tick "Enable SDR black floor emulation" and input your paper white value in nits in processing cut off. That's it, the gamma mismatch is fixed! Video guide on fixing the gamma mismatch. There might be a rare case when good native HDR simply lacks peak brightness setting (The Last of Us or Dead Space (2023) are examples of that). Without tonemapping these games will clip highlights, trying to output very high brightness. In that case install ReShade and select Lillium's HDR shaders during the installation. You'll need HDR analysis and tonemapping shaders specifically. Then just enable Lillium's tonemapping shader and set target luminance to your peak brightness. You can verify with Lillium's HDR analysis that it's working correctly (drag the analysis shader below tonemapping on Reshade effects list so that it includes the results). 2. HDR mods (RenoDX/Luma) If your game has a broken HDR or doesn't have HDR at all, there might be a mod available for it. The 2 main mods you'll need are RenoDX or Luma. They're used to add or fix and improve existing HDR implementations. RenoDX is more focused on adding or fixing HDR. Luma, besides adding HDR, also allows for more extensive modding (game-specific fixes, ultrawide support, adding HDR rendering, replacing AA with DLSS/DLAA and so on). If a mod is available for the game, it's the best option to go with. It's mainly intended for single-player games, you will likely get banned in multiplayer, depending on the anti-cheat! Reshade shows the same warning before installation to remind you. Instructions are listed on each mods' page, but are usually as simple as: install ReShade with add-on support. Drop the mod into the game folder, next to the exe file. Press Home to open ReShade menu. There you can further customize HDR in the mod's menu. Set your peak brightness and paper white/game brightness (most mods set them up automatically). All the other sliders by default match the original look of the game. Disable Generic Depth and Effect Runtime Sync in Reshade add-ons tab. They're not needed for Reno/Luma and may harm performance. Video guide on RenoDX/Luma installation and comparison against RTX HDR/Special K/SDR. Video guide on Universal Unreal Engine RenoDX mod (Adding HDR) Video guide on Universal Unreal Engine 4 Luma mod (Adding DLAA/DLSS/FSR3, no HDR for now). Regarding in-game HDR: leave it enabled, unless specific mod tells you to disable it. Some RenoDX mods only fix up native, so they need it to work. Some replace native altogether, so they don't need native. With Universal Unreal Engine mod disable native. UE Extended mod is currently in development to replace it, and it allows to leave native HDR on. Multi-game mods: Generic UE4/5 - Unity RenoDX: They support a huge number of games. The ones listed on RenoDX wiki are just what's been tested already. You can try using them on any Unity or UE4-5 game and see the results. If it doesn't work, consider joining RenoDX Discord server where you can send the needed shader files yourself for your game to be added to the mod. The number of available mods for different games is constantly growing. If you want to keep up to date with new mods or experience issues with a mod, join HDR Den and RenoDX Discord servers. You may ask, how can HDR be modded in, if the game is only in SDR? Well, since the mid-2000s most 3D games utilize HDR rendering. That means they work with high dynamic range internally, regardless of display, and then convert to SDR. This is how modders can add HDR, by just allowing the game to output HDR it already makes use of anyway. Reshade HDR Installer (All-in-one mod manager for simple automatic installation) Reshade HDR Installer (RHI) is a new mod manager that scans your games and installs Reshade, Display Commander and RenoDX/Luma when available. It's very simple to use, and highly recommended to simplify installation even further. Inverse tonemapping HDR: These 2 methods add native HDR, and methods below add "fake" HDR. (*Special K pipeline remastering and DXVK-HDR can be the exceptions). The difference is that the methods below work with the final SDR image and use inverse tone mapping (ITM) to expand it to HDR, to mimic how it looks like. Keep in mind that inverse tonemapping =/= bad. It's obviously worse than real, native HDR, but in most cases it can still look better than plain SDR. It gives the appearance of HDR and bright highlights, but doesn't show new details native HDR would. How good ITM will look depends on how good SDR is in the game. The less clipped it is, the better the image will be. 3. RTX HDR (Nvidia only) If the game has no native or modded HDR, and you have an Nvidia GPU, you can use RTX HDR. It works almost everywhere by analyzing the SDR image and stretching (inverse tonemapping) that to HDR. It produces great results, and is incredibly easy to use. It does have some drawbacks: It has a specific look and some people prefer other methods. If you don't like how it looks and sliders don't help, consider other options. There is a sizable performance hit (usually 5-10%). Can be halved by lowering or disabling debanding in Nvidia Profile Inspector. Capped at 1000 nits. Even though slider goes further, it actually stops there. This isn't an issue however, since it's not really advisable to use any ITM higher than 600-800 nits. especially so for games with lots of clipping. You can enable it globally and disable for selected games, or for each game by pressing Alt+F3. Windows Auto HDR needs to be disabled (if you don't want to disable it globally, you can disable it per-game in System -> Display -> Graphics). Default RTX HDR settings are decent, but it's better to tweak the sliders slightly, to get 2.2 gamma. Add +25 to Contrast. -25 Saturation will get rid of extra saturation added, to get the neutral colors. Game brightness is adjusted with mid-grey, which does the same, but depends on gamma/contrast slider. Use this RTX HDR settings table to tweak the sliders. 4. Special K HDR Special K is "the Swiss army knife of PC gaming'. It's tool that has a ton of different useful features for games. One of them is HDR retrofit, which can add HDR to games, regardless of your GPU. By default also has good inverse tonemapping, which works with the final SDR image. However DX11 games can make use of pipeline remastering, which allows SK to inject itself before SDR image is finalized, to allow for better HDR by restoring clipped highlights, similar to native. This places SK HDR somewhere between fake and native HDR. The trade-off is that it may require some time to set up. scRGB 16 bit Preset 0 uses just ITM, is good enough and doesn't really need adjustment. You can just enable it and play the game. Pipeline remastering however can cause instability and crashes, you'll have to tweak it until you get good results. SpecialK have their own HDR retrofit guide. 5. Windows Auto HDR Windows has its own Auto HDR feature, which also does inverse tonemapping and works automatically. You just launch a game and it adds HDR with no performance impact and on any GPU, what kind of magic is this? Though it's great on paper, Microsoft has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again. Remember that whole Windows SDR gamma mismatch thing? Yep, Auto HDR does the same thing and is almost always wrong. There's a simple fix. If that crushes blacks, you probably run into a rare game that actually uses sRGB gamma that Windows assumes. In that case you don't need the fix. It also uses a whitelist of games where it'll be enabled and doesn't work on DirectX 9 games. DX10-12 games that aren't on the whitelist can be forced to use Auto HDR with this tool. There's also the matter of brightness settings, which are not intuitive at all. Brightness is controlled by the confusing SDR brightness slider. Auto HDR seems to use significantly higher values than set on the slider, for unknown reasons. Because of this it's recommended to leave it as low as you can, ideally 0-5. At this point I'm convinced that Microsoft just hates HDR users. 6. ReShade Auto HDR Another Auto HDR method can be used with ReShade shaders. It's better than Windows Auto HDR in most cases, and can compete with Special K HDR and RTX HDR. It requires some tinkering to do, but offers more customization. Install Reshade with Add-on support. During the installation choose Lillium's shaders and AdvancedAutoHDR by Pumbo. In the add-on section, install AutoHDR addon. Convert the output to HDR. Launch the game and open ReShade -> add-ons and tick enable HDR under AutoHDR section. Alternatively you can do this with Special K - just switch to scRGB (16 bit) and choose Preset 3 (scRGB passthrough). If you're going with Special K, you can install the normal Reshade with no addons. Open Reshade and use your inverse tonemapping shader of choice. It can be either AdvancedAutoHDR or lillium's inverse tonemapping. Pick which one you like more. Settings can seem complicated, but have helpful tooltips when you hover on them. Mainly just set the input gamma, paper white and peak brightness. The rest is fine tuning. You can use lillium's HDR analysis to easily see what's going on with a waveform in the lower right corner. HDR analysis shader needs to be below your inverse tone mapping shader to correctly analyze the image! In Reshade menu drag it down to the bottom of the list. 7. DXVK-HDR (Advanced) Alternative to AutoHDR addon is lillium's DXVK-HDR fork. It converts the game from DirectX to Vulkan and forces HDR output. The upside of this method, is that it allows for pipeline remastering, and unlike SK, isn't limited to just DX11. So you can get better HDR in DX9 and 10 too. The downside is that it's experimental. It requires time and patience to set up. Most of the games will probably have some issues. You can also use it on DX8-10 games to simply get HDR output (if you want to use Reshade HDR shaders for example.) In order for it to work with ReShade, you'll need to choose Vulkan in the ReShade installer. Pick the correct DLL for your game and place it next to the game's executable. Find out which API your games uses and whether it's 32 or 64 bit. You can usually find this information on PCGW down in API section. Which DLL to use: DX8 - d3d8.dll, d3d9.dll DX9 - d3d9.dll DX10 - d3d10core.dll, dx11.dll, dxgi.dll DX11 - d3d11.dll, dxgi.dll After that copy the of the .conf files from the DXVK archive. More experimental configs produce better results, but might be unstable. Choose the one you want and paste it in the game's folder (rename the file to dxvk.conf). If you just want HDR output for Reshade shaders, safest configs are enough. Open the game's profile in Nvidia Profile Inspector and set Vulkan/OpenGL present method to Prefer layered on DXGI Swapchain (this one you can set globally), and Vulkan/OpenGL present method - flags to 0x000802A5. Install ReShade with lillium's shaders. Enable map_sdr_into_sdr and set the correct gamma (most likely 2.2, but can be other). Set overbright bits handling to apply gamma and set your paper white in SDR whitepoint. Enable lillium's tonemapping or advancedautoHDR and set your peak brightness there. Alternatively you can use Special K HDR (enable scRGB 16 bit mode and scRGB passthrough). Special K can't do tonemapping though, so if the highlights exceed peak brightness, you'll need ReShade too (lillium's tonemapping). How to combine ReShade and Special K (I recommend central installation, for convenience). DXVK-HDR and Special K pipeline remastering video guide. DXVK-HDR video tutorial, native HDR in GTA 4. Methods sorted by quality: RenoDX/Luma Native HDR Special K w/ pipeline remasters and DXVK-HDR RTX HDR/Special K/ReShade Auto HDR/fixed Windows Auto HDR (up to personal preference) Stock Windows Auto HDR Methods sorted by how easy they are to set up: RenoDX/Luma Native HDR (unless it's horrible and needs work) RTX HDR Auto HDR Special K/ReShade Auto HDR Special K pipeline remastering DXVK-HDR TL;DR: Use RenoDX/Luma mods, if not, then native. If there's no native use the other solution of your choice (3-7). Hope this guide sheds some light on how to get proper working HDR in games, even if it came out a bit long. Edit: Useful videos on the topic: RENODX/LUMA install process Reshade gamma fixes NVAPI fixes 5 min starting guide on HDR Replacing UE4 TAA with DLSS/DLAA/FSR, using Luma Special K and DXVK-HDR guide submitted by /u/S1l3ntSN00P to r/OLED_Gaming [link] [comments]
|
r/OLED_Gaming |
S1l3ntSN00P |
Nov 10, 2025 |
|
A Detailed Guide For Building Your Own Gaming PC
Building a PC is actually more entertaining than you think. However if you don't like to do research about a part's specs, then you might not find this helpful. This is how you will truly value your PC, this way you will look at your PC and know its worth, instead of looking at a box shape with some lights. This guide is useful when building from scratch, since it will go through all parts one by one in the best possible order to greatly reduce the amount of times you have to go back and change parts. (You might not even have to go back and change parts at all). If you need to upgrade and/or still looking for parts, skip to the respective section for the part, you will profit aswell from reading this guide. "The most important part is to HAVE FUN!" -Waffler11 Before we start, there are a some things that you have to be clear about: This guide will not Build the PC for you. This is a guide for you to know what to look for and which parts are most suitable for your build. Read every single thing you don't know about each part's specs, obviously you don't have to go crazy with all things. I will be mentioning things that YOU NEED to look for, but the more curious you are the better. This will help you easily determine most incompatibilities and help you build everything part by part so you don't have to go back to a specific part and change it over and over. Organization Google for your preferred web page for building PCs. I don't want to seem like promoting a Webpage in particular, but PcPartPicker worked great for me and they give you warnings regarding incompatibility. (Other websites might do the same). Ask yourself: "For what am I building this PC". To run a game in particular? perhaps to have the best of the best? who knows? Only you. It is based on this that you will build your PC and estimate a budget (notice how I said estimate a budget, because it will vary as you learn more about PC parts). Once you know what you want your PC for, you will have to preplan. This is having an idea of what GPU you need to run certain games, and is actually the most notorious part of a PC, so think of one, but might not be the definitive GPU (you might even want to change GPU brands). What if you want to choose the Monitor first? No problem at all, you can also choose your desired GPU based on the Resolution and Refresh Rates you wish to play. In this case if you want to know which monitor will be the best for you, scroll down to the "Monitor" part of the Guide. (Keep in mind that prioritizing the Monitor means you have to try to keep the GPU that can run at the desired Resolution and Refresh Rates while also keeping in mind any bottleneck from both GPU and CPU) Notice: Some RGB counterparts will be more expensive, so if you want a lot of RGB on your PC, you know what to expect on that budget. More on this as the guide goes on. First Part: CPU Forget about that beautiful case you saw somewhere or those cool shaped RAMs or the flashy Motherboard, CHOOSE A CPU FIRST. How To Choose A CPU For Your Needs First of all, know your options, Intel and AMD are both very good, check out for those 2. Please take your time to read about the CPU specs. Things to look for are Cores, Threads, Base Clock, Boost Clock and their general performance in your trusted benchmark webpage. All these specs differ from Generation and Model. You don't have to worry between AMD, Intel and Nvidia CPUs and GPUs not working properly together or being incompatible, they will work smoothly in any combination. Consider for the future about Single, Dual and Quad Channel. This is for the RAM, I suggest you read about these now and choose a CPU which supports these Channels. Having more than Single Channel will increase the RAMs brandwidth, leading to increased Memory Read, Write, Copy and Brandwidth. Stock coolers usually comes with a stick thermal paste already applied as well as some coolers from other brands that you but some may not have the paste applied, so its good that you read if they will have it already applied or not. Thermal Paste: Keep in mind that eventually you will need to reapply paste if you move the cooler, if you notice an unusual increase in your temps or after a few years. In which case you can get a good Thermal Paste, they are are relatively cheap, make a big impact on your CPU temperatures and are easy to apply. So there is no harm getting a Thermal Paste, just make sure you get a quality thermal paste. And yes, some reduce temperatures better than others but also the way you apply it and the amount you apply helps reducing temperatures, look for the best way and quantity. Notice: You don't necessarily have to prioritize the GPU over the CPU, this is just in case you plan on only playing less demanding popular games like, CS:GO, LoL, Valorant, etc. they don't require the best of GPUs out there so you can go for a better CPU. Second Part: Case Cases comes in many sizes, the 3 most popular ones are: Full Tower, Mid Tower and Mini-ITX. Check out each of these case's sizes and spacing. Some cases of the same size category will vary in sizes, and some times not fit the motherboard of the specific size category. For Ex: An ATX case might be smaller than most ATX cases and an ATX motherboard might not fit properly, so also checking the cases's dimensions where the motherboard will be placed, it is important to be aware of these scenarios. Keep in mind the size of your GPU (since it takes a lot of space) to make sure it fits on your case. New Gen GPUs are being manufactured in a bigger size. It's time to choose the manufacturer, they will mostly vary in Aesthetics however keep in mind, you should probably want to make sure the case has good "Airflow", the name itself tells you what it is, but look it up if you are not sure. Best way to make sure the case has good airflow is to check reviews... multiple reviews, and good ones where they will specify what room temp they had during the test so you get an idea. Make sure you get a modern case, you won't regret it but you might want a modern case so you can use all of the motherboard's ports and not waste a single penny also when upgrading the motherboard, since you are more likely to change the motherboard before the case (this is another reason why the case is the second part). Check what's in the box for the case you want to choose, it might not come in with enough fans than you expected, or maybe it won't come with some of the things you see in some pictures. Third Part: GPU You probably did not expected this but, there is nothing complicated about GPUs. Look for features about each GPU brand and model, there are brands and model with their own features that is why I can't list them to you, depends on what brand you choose. You have already chose a Brand because you knew which one would run the game you want to play, or maybe you changed brands and models. Either way, now it's time for you to look about the specifications: Base Clock, Boost Clock & Memory Size. (I want you to look at this because they vary depending on Brand, Model and Series and they give you an idea on which you would rather choose) Now you most likely already decided your Brand, Model and Series for the GPU, check out the Display Connectors and keep that in mind, we will need this for the monitor. Notice: The more Memory Capacity the GPU has does not mean better performance. Fourth Part: Motherboard Ah yes, the motherboard, remember the CPU you chose? and the case you chose? here is where you will be limited to your motherboard choosing. (choosing the right motherboard might take awhile specially with all the features one motherboard can have and all the different variations). Also you might come across SLI (for Nvidia) and/or CrossFire (for Radeon). Before you get hyped, games need to be SLI/CrossFire compatible and not to mention that sometimes it will not work with different GPUs Architecture. So instead of spending money for this feature in a motherboard and for 1 extra GPU, your best choice is for a single high-end GPU. (Also with the amount of power and performance on the new gen GPUs, SLI and CrossFire are less worth. *IMPORTANT: Please read motherboard specs and features, literally anything you don't know, look up what it is, this is critical for building a PC. Looking for everything will also let you easily identify incompatibilities. Some motherboards does not include Sound Card and/or Wi-Fi cards. First, and I mean it, first you must make sure that your motherboard fits the case, motherboards commonly come in mini ITX and ATX, look those up in google and make sure which size is the one for your case (obviously you will realize a mini ITX motherboard can actually be used on a mid tower or bigger). Now you will choose a motherboard with the right Socket depending on the CPU you chose. Now make sure that the motherboard's BIOS is up to date with the CPU you chose, or you will get firetrucked up yours. Pro Tip: google "Best motherboards for [CPU of your choosing]". Another important thing to consider for a motherboard, if it supports Dual Channel & Quad Channel. Great, with all those 4 filters, you can freely look for a nice looking Motherboard for your PC build and read the specs, yes please read them you won't regret it. Specially since I almost bought a motherboard dedicated for custom water cooling, I was about to pay extra for nothing. Some other important things to look for in a motherboard are the amount of VRM and their quality. The amount of Memory Type and also how much Memory Speed is supported, the storage drives slots available. Another lesser thing to look for in a motherboard, is that each motherboard brand offers their unique features, check them out if you feel like and see which one you like the most. Notice: Wi-Fi Cards are not mandatory, they are more of an option. Fifth Part: RAM There is more to look for a RAM than you might think, don't just look for a RAM based on the amount of GBs it has. RAM comes in different Memory Type and have different Memory Speed and CAS Latency, check out what role both of these terms play in a PC to choose your preferred one. You can buy individually RAM usually comes in pair, properly named as "RAM Kit", which some are 8GB (2x4) or 16GB (2x8) or 32GB (4x8) or 32GB (2x16) etc. If you still haven't figured it out, let me explain: Ex. we have 16GB (2x8). The "16GB" is the total memory capacity, this total memory capacity is divided into 2 different RAM sticks, each one with 8GB capacity. (Think carefully which kit you choose, since your Motherboard has limited RAM slots). Which RAM to choose? one that does not exceeds the Motherboard's max Memory Capacity and that is the right Memory Type for your motherboard while also making sure the RAM can run with the CPU. Another pro-tip: google "best ram for [CPU of your choosing]". Remember about Single, Dual and Quad Channel. Be sure to check if both the motherboard and CPU are compatible with Dual Channel and/or Quad Channel. Once you have chosen a RAM brand, and want to increase your RAM Memory Capacity, you have buy the same brand of RAM and RAM Model. You can freely choose the RAM's Aesthetics you like the most (also, RAM can be more expensive just because they have RGB). There is a catch though, look up if any Brand's RAM model has any known issue with certain motherboards or CPUs. Since looks might be deceiving. Sixth Part: Storage Probably the simplest part, SSD is a lot more faster and expensive than the HDD, so much faster that if you have an SSD and you don't install windows on the SSD you must really enjoy looking at your OS booting up. SSD is faster for gaming, yes, game loading times is not mainly determined by GPU, its by storage drives. But SSD gets expensive as you get more Storage capacity, so you can have SSDs and HDDs both in the same motherboard, if your motherboard has the designated storage slots for the drives. Look for these terms: Form Factors for Storage Drives, SSD, HDD, Write/Read speed, Random write/read IOPS. Check special features for each individual storage drive from each brand. Seventh Part: Cooler This will be long because of all the different things to cover. First of all, Search what OverClocking a CPU is. You don't need to know how to OverClock yet, as it also depends on which CPU you chose, but if you are interested in OverClocking, I recommend you learn how a CPU Clocks and Voltages works together, then you learn how to OverClock. Answer these questions: Does your CPU comes with a stock cooler? Yes No Do you plan on OverClocking your CPU? You must buy a Cooler Yes No Highly recommended to buy a Cooler You don't need to buy a Cooler (If you are reading from mobile, there is a table that won't properly show. The table determines whether you should buy or not a cooler based on your plans) *If you don't want/need to buy a cooler you can skip to the next part* There are Air Cooler and Water Cooler (AIO). AIOs are water coolers already built that will only require screwing to mount and do not take up much space, perfect for RGB builds. However, AIOs might not fit your Case and some Air Coolers are not compatible with your motherboard. First choose if you are going with Air Cooling or AIO, both are good ways to cool the hottest of CPUs, so don't think Water is worthless or Air is worthless. Check out which cooler you like the most and take these into consideration: How much they can cool the CPU during load and idle times while considering how much noise (dBA) they produce the harder they have to work to cool the CPU. (The amount of noise is personal preference, if you want a quieter place or don't mind the little noise) After choosing one, make sure it fits your case and/or it is compatible with your motherboard. Best way to check this is looking for Reviews, Youtube videos for the specific case and cooler or asking on Reddit or the Cooler's webpage might provide that information. (Yes, if you know the measurements of the case and the Coolers it should fit, but there could be some exceptions or a little piece from the inside which will block the cooler, best bet is the 3 previous suggestions). Notice: I do not talk about custom water cooling, there is no specific way to install it so you would have to carefully measure and get the individual parts. Also installing such cooler is a lot harder very expensive and you would have to really enjoy working hard to give it maintenance. I would suggest you stick with traditional coolers. Eighth Part: Power Supply Unit Hopefully the webpage you chose to build your PC is able to estimate your fully built PC's Watts consumption, from this estimate you will choose a proper PSU. Before we go on, forget anything you read about PSUs, this part has a lot of mixed "opinions". Once you read more and more about PSU you can have your own opinion about PSUs. Look what are the differences between a Fully Modular, Semi Modular and Non Modular PSU. (Fully Modular becomes more expensive, but opens up for more compatibility and any future parts upgrade, this is a very important thing to consider, however you might not need a Fully nor a Semi Modular PSU). It is important to check the PSUs Certification. Any Certified PSU is a safe choice, you might want to read why PSU are certified and what each type of certification means. Now like any other part, PSUs also comes in with different features depending on the brand and their different models. Also keep in mind the most important things to look in a PSU is the amount of output pin slots and the size of the PSU will fit your case. Monitor You sure have one in mind, but listen carefully, read about every terms in a monitor, know what those 1ms Response Time and 144hz Refresh Rate you often see on the specifications mean. Be mindful when choosing a Monitor Size, a 27" 1080p monitor looks like it has less Resolution than a 24" 1080p monitor, and this is because of the PPI. Look up what that is and then you can have an idea of what would be the ideal Monitor Size and Resolution. There are 3 different panels for monitors: IPS, VA, & TN. Each of this panels offer different functionality. It is something important to take into consideration. Now, if your GPU has an HDMI 2.0, to fully take advantage of your GPU, get a Monitor with an HDMI 2.0, maybe your GPU has DisplayPort 1.4, which offers more bandwidth than HDMI 2.0, then you would want to consider buying a monitor with DisplayPort 1.4. Look all about the different Video Connectivity Protocols. Keep in mind that you don't need to have the exact same protocol on both ends, for Ex.: You can connect the DisplayPort cable, from the 1.4 on your GPU into the 1.2 into your Monitor and work fine. Again, each Brand and their models have different features and design, look around which one you like the most. That is all about the crucial parts of a PC, you can then add another GPU, or another case fan, or a toy, even a toy, like an anime figurine or whatever, seems to be trendy now a day. Hopefully you found this useful in any way possible, and I would be a very proud to know you read everything just to build your PC, your "Baby" if you will. I'll leave these useful web pages that I personally think you should know about while building a PC. CPU-world.com - Use this to check out all information about a certain CPU. (Don't let the weird names and numbers scare you) Pangoly.com - A website to Build your PCs and is also very good when you want to compare different part options. Obviously you can also use YouTube and Reddit for reviews and/or specific questions, comparisons and statistics. Please consider leaving any kind of feedback, if there is something that should be reviewed/changed on this guide, do let me know so I can work on it ensure this guide as flawless as possible. Other than that comment anything you did like, as always following this subreddit's rules, I will be more than happy to read all comments/questions. I would also appreciate anyone else answering other users questions as you would be helping me out while I am busy on something else. Message for this post: Some may have felt let down by the guide, most of you appreciated it and I did not expect this guide to blow up like this. I personally made this from my own experience and my goal was to encourage people to research everything themselves when building a PC. when I did it myself, I enjoyed it very much. The title seems misleading yes, it is a lot of "google this and that" and less of a glossary for you to know what each thing is. But I am not going to leave it like this. Thanks to all the feedbacks I have been getting in the comments, all the incorrect points and other points I missed, I will fix them and soon enough this guide should be good for anyone reading this. I ask you to not stop commenting out these important details, let us together finish this guide, after all I started to grow fond of the r/buildapc subreddit and I want the best for everyone here. Thank you all for the support and critics. submitted by /u/Bushott to r/buildapc [link] [comments]
|
r/buildapc |
Bushott |
Sep 23, 2020 |
United States
