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Everyone wants to know how to make their PC faster for free, either by squeezing more frames out of an older setup or building a new gaming rig. One area people usually overlook is their BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or UEFI firmware that sits beneath the Windows or Linux operating system.

Most people avoid going into their BIOS because it looks like a complicated, text-heavy engineering menu, but it's the control center of the motherboard, which in turn controls every PC component. By learning how to unlock advanced BIOS settings, gamers can switch a few simple options to unlock the performance they paid for without spending a dime. Sometimes, components and motherboards don't perform as well as they should out of the box, so going into BIOS is one of the best ways to get the most out of a new PC .

To kick things off, restart the PC and repeatedly press the Delete, F2, or F12 key depending on the motherboard manufacturer before Windows starts to load.…