Beginners 101 - How to Get Started with PC Gaming in 4K Monitor

Since the appearance of the very-first 4K monitor, gamers were given the chance to experience gameplay at a whole-new level. Then, the big names like Sony and Microsoft joined the bandwagon by offering their own consoles that support 4K gaming. 

If you’re thinking of rushing to get started in PC gaming at 4K, wait up! Remember that you'll need a decent gaming PC designed to run 4K graphics.

Gaming at 4K and 1080P – What’s the Difference?

To determine if it's worth shifting to 4K gaming, let’s check out what makes 4k and 1080p gaming different from each other.

1080p gaming is the most common when it comes to PC gaming. This is gaming at a 1920x1080 resolution and in full high definition. 1080p gaming is a fantastic choice that provides great image quality but also doesn’t require the beefiest gaming PC in the world to run.

A lot of decent graphics cards that you can find today can play games at over 60 fps and 1080P. 

Gaming at 4K resolution however is a bit of a different beast. 4K resolution feature 4x the pixel count as similarly-sized monitors that are 1080P. To put it simply, you will enjoy excellent image clarity together with perfect picture quality. This all leads to a more immersive gaming experience and allows you to see more detail in your games than ever before.

The downside of 4K gaming is that you do require a more powerful computer to run the games, which means that the entry cost to 4K gaming is higher than that of 1080p gaming.

Make Sure Your Monitor Supports 4k Gaming

To get started with gaming in amazing 4K, the first you need to is to get a 4K monitor that supports it. But again, choosing one in this day and age isn’t as easy as it sounds.

When you consider the prices, it’s easy to spend over a thousand dollars on a decent 4K gaming monitor that offers good response time and refresh rate. Of course, what you’re getting will all depend on your budget. 

For refresh rates, having a higher one for gaming on a 4K display is vital. However, you’re may have a tricky time pushing your games at 60 fps if you don’t have suitable components in your PC. 

Remember that support for 4K only appeared in HDMI 1.4, and it was only for 30 fps. If you're using a 60Hz 4K monitor, you’ll need HDMI 2.0 for it to work properly. 

Ideally you would want to try and find a monitor that supports the new HDMI 2.1 standard as this will allow you to not only do 4K PC gaming, but also 4K gaming on the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox.

When choosing a monitor, also make sure you consider the size of the monitor. The larger the monitor size, the more power you will need to run 4K games.

As a gamer, you want the best equipment to experience top-notch gaming. And with titles that have increased resolution for heightened visual experience.

Among the most notable 4K gaming monitors available is the FV-43U from AORUS. It's one of the best gaming monitors you can get with a 144Hz refresh rate.

It has amazing quality and its size rivals a lot of the popular TV's at home and has every feature that comes with high-end, quality gaming monitors.

Your GPU Choice Makes all the Difference

To have the ultimate 4K gaming PC, a well-performing GPU is what you need. It's important since the GPU handles all those eye-catching and gorgeous visuals on the screen.

If you are looking to have the smoothest experience when gaming in 4K, the control center of the whole operation is your GPU. The GPU is responsible for processing the huge amounts of information that the latest games require.

To put it more simply, the better the GPU, the better it is able to handle its graphics processing.

If you want perfect and seamless frame rates while in 4K at/or higher than 60 fps you will want to be looking at something like the AORUS GeForce RTX™ 3080 XTREME 10G. With most games it should be able to handle gaming at 4k on a 144Hz monitor with ease. So, it’s perfect to give you that immersive, amazing, and breathtaking gaming experience.

Get Yourself a Decent CPU and Quality RAM

Gaming PC’s are known to pack great CPUs together with high performance memory. This is the hardware that works alongside your graphics cards to provide the power your PC needs to display your games and various apps at 4K.

So, you have to make sure that these aren’t bottlenecks.

When you’re choosing a CPU to work well with your graphics card, it should be a fairly recent model. It doesn’t need to be the latest CPU available but try and stick within the generations released in the last couple of years.

As for memory, for standard 1080p gaming you can opt for 16GB or RAM however for 4K gaming its better to aim for 32GB of RAM if it is possible.

The CPU and RAM should access data in a snap which is why speed is important. If not, you’ll experience slow performance despite having top-notch and fast components.
 

Choose the Right Games to Play

One of the biggest things to consider when gaming at 4K is what games you are going to actually play.

You want to ensure that the game developers have followed the best development practices and have created the games with 4K in mind. You could have the best gaming PC in the world, but a poorly optimised game will still create an unpleasant gaming experience.

Ensure that the game has lots of in-game graphics settings available to you so that you can tweak your graphics settings if needed. If you are getting some lag while running the game at 4K max settings, lower some of the settings down until the game plays smoothly.

A properly optimised games makes all of the difference.

Learn More:

- Beginners 101 - What to Look for in a 4K Gaming Monitor

- Beginners 101 – What is a Graphics Card?

- Beginners 101 – What is RAM?

- Pre-built desktops versus build your own - What's the difference?

 

Tips for choosing：

－Beginners 101 – 5 Tips When Purchasing Your New Graphics Card

－Beginners 101 – 5 Tips When Purchasing RAM