Let’s start with the basics. You may have heard of one (or all) of these apps, but I don’t want to assume everyone has just because these apps are popular. With the exception of Wallpaper Engine, the other two apps are free, and you should definitely have them at the ready.
3DMark
It’s important to have an objective benchmark on your gaming PC, and that’s exactly what 3DMark is. It’s a consistent test that will spit out a score at the end, and although it doesn’t always fully represent your PC’s performance, it provides a baseline for comparison that’s much more consistent than an in-game benchmark. And that can be useful in a ton of cases.
If you’re doing a hardware swap, 3DMark allows you to quickly see how much of a performance jump you’re really getting. Or maybe you’re experimenting with undervolting or overclocking — 3DMark shows the impact of your efforts. Even if you aren’t tinkering, 3DMark will show you how your score compares to other similarly configured PCs, so you can get a rough idea of if you’re getting expected performance or if something is wrong.
The full version of 3DMark is available for purchase, but you really don’t need it. The free version — listed as a demo on Steam — includes the main benchmarks available to paid users, including the new Steel Nomad benchmark. You build a gaming PC for playing games, not running benchmarks, but don’t discount 3DMark as a tool for quickly validating your performance.
OBS Studio
OBS Studio is the standard when it comes to streaming and recording. It’s highly configurable, easy to use, and it works for everything from multiplatform broadcasting to recording gameplay clips locally. And it’s available through Steam for free.
Although recording simple gameplay clips is easier through your graphics card’s software — either GeForce Experience or Radeon Software — OBS Studio steps in whenever you need something more intense. You can set up elaborate scenes, split audio and video tracks, and overlay multiple layers to get your capture looking right. There are also a ton of options for encoding, allowing you to go all the way up to lossless quality.
OBS Studio isn’t an essential app for everyone, but if you record YouTube videos, stream, or anything in between, there’s nothing better.
Wallpaper Engine
Whenever a friend of mine gets a gaming PC, there’s one app I always gift them — Wallpaper Engine. There aren’t many games, let alone apps, that have a 98% positive rating on Steam, and that’s exactly what Wallpaper Engine has achieved. The app gives you complete control over your desktop wallpaper, leveraging a massive database of community-made designs. There are literally hundreds of thousands of wallpapers — static, animated, and interactive — that you can toy around with, as well as make your own.
Wallpaper Engine isn’t perfect. Animated wallpapers can hog some of your PC’s resources, and there are occasionally hiccups while playing games. Thankfully, the utility gives you a ton of tools to tweak your background, from pausing animations to choosing scaling settings. If you don’t have Wallpaper Engine in your Steam account, you’re missing out.
Digging Deeper
The basics are expected, but the real treasures lie deeper on the Steam software page. These are the apps that have transformed how I use my gaming PC, but that doesn’t mean you should pick up all of them. They’re all paid, ranging in price from affordable to premium, so ideally you’ll be able to find a couple that work for your setup without picking all of them up.
Lossless Scaling
I almost considered adding this app to the basics section above because it’s so essential. Lossless Scaling has been around for a few years, but it really exploded in popularity over the past few months. It’s a utility that adds upscaling and frame generation to any game with any graphics card. It doesn’t change any of your game files, either.
