How to Setup Your PC for Competitive Gaming

Getting Started

Hey guys, Michael3D here from the Curse NA Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team and I wanted to talk to you about the process I go through for setting up not only my personal PC at home but any LAN PC I might be playing on for a tournament. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a gamer is to inadequately setup your machine which will in turn make you very inconsistent with your play.

In this guide I will go through step by step and show you what you should do to remedy this with some easy optimizations for your mouse, video, sound, and Windows settings.

Lets start off by going over what’s probably considered the most important aspect of your gaming setup, your mouse settings. The main option we need to go over here is mouse acceleration, which is a horrible thing to use for gaming. Mouse acceleration is a feature in Windows that allows you to move your mouse cursor faster or slower depending on how quickly you actually swing the mouse. This in itself can cause extreme inconsistencies when you need to turn quickly and shoot at someone or spin around and be precise. By turning off mouse acceleration you can make all of your movements 1 to 1 so they are always the same no matter how quickly you make your turns.

In Windows 7 there are two easy steps to make sure and do...

Turning Mouse Acceleration Off in Windows 7

Step 1

Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointer Options -> Uncheck Enhanced Pointer Precision

Step 2

You will need to download MarkC Windows 7 MouseFix. Now right click your desktop and hit Personalize -> now click Display -> Look at your Text DPI size that you have set, by default most people use the smaller setting which = 100% -> Now go ahead and open up the MarkC Mouse Fix and click on the corresponding file that relates to your PC’s text DPI size (100% in most cases) This registry file that you click on will make sure there is no more mouse acceleration in Windows 7, if you ever want to revert this you can just click on the Windows Default file.

Now after a simple computer reboot you will have no mouse acceleration and be set for any game since this fix turns off acceleration at the Windows level. Also on a side note here I wanted to comment on leaving the Windows mouse speed at a default of 6 out of 11 on the option. This is crucial for keeping a 1 to 1 ratio for your mouse movements.

Keep reading to check out the full guide, helping you make the most out of your gaming PC from a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player!