Essential software for new pc

[gox1201]

Greetings, seeing as there is no thread like this, I wanted to know what software everyone feels is absolutely essential for a new pc for enthusiast/gamer/overclocker type use.


So you build a new pc, you install all the components, install Windows from a usb... Now what?

What goes on first day? First week?

Benching tools, overclocking tools, drivers/frameworks/libraries/codecs?

Software must haves - Freeware/Opensource as well as bought products?


Please put down your must haves! I'll update the thread with the common products

Regards
Me

 

[Macethy]

Google Chrome
Steam
Open source Office

 

[VPII]

1. Windows 7 64bit - bought
2. Drivers
3. Driver Fusion - bought
4. Firefox
5. AVG
6. Benchmark Applications - bought and gotten with hardware
7. Microsoft Office - bought
8. Steam - games to follow

 

[Oj0]

Drivers and Opera 11.84, then sit there cursing that there are so many things you never think of. Updating DirectX 9 because you still get an outdated version, BOINC, Steam, Origin, WinRAR, VLC, Skype, WinAmp, Firefox, Chrome, MSI Afterburner, EVGA E-Leet, CPU-Z, Photoshop, Office, antivirus... The list goes on and on.

I haven't done a reload since Windows 7 came out, my installation has been dragged across several hard drives, RAID arrays and SSDs.

 

[Suberman]

Well after installing windows on my new SSD, my first goal was to configure windows for performance i.e. disable hibernation, change pagefile size etc. then installed all drivers and made clean system backup.
Then most important programs (Easus todo backup, avast, malwarebytes, 7zip, chrome/firefox, open office, teracopy, VLC, adobe/sumatraPDf) and then other applications and games.

 

[Senshi]

7 zip for compressed files
Adobe Reader for pdf's
CCCP for all and any media playback
Winamp 2.7x for mp3 playback
DirectX 11 offline installer
Microsoft security essentials + latest update
Google Chrome
Networx

 

[Twitch_ZA]

Latest Drivers
VLC
HWmonitor
WinRAR
AntiVirus software
Update DirectX etc

 

[PhireSide]

Awesome idea!

First I install drivers, turn off Windows Updates (If it is Windows 7 I install SP1 from a flash drive), then I have a pretty standard set of software:

MSE, for basic antivirus protection (and it's free)
Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, Java, F.lux (colour calibration program that adjusts with time of the day), Chrome, Steam, Origin
I also turn off unneeded Windows features like the Games, Indexing service, IIS server, etc.
VC redistributables I do not worry about as they usually come with the games that need them.
Dot Net Framework 4 as I run into issues sometimes on machines without it.
MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision/Rivatuner, Teracopy, winRAR, RealTemp, VLC Media Player

That's all I can think of for now

 

[SoloMid]

No one mention Battlelog web plugin?

 

[Oj0]

Why do you turn off Indexing Service? It makes a huge difference to the speed of your searches.

 

[gox1201]

1. Windows 7 64bit - bought
2. Drivers
3. Driver Fusion - bought
4. Firefox
5. AVG
6. Benchmark Applications - bought and gotten with hardware
7. Microsoft Office - bought
8. Steam - games to follow

Mind extrapolating the list of benching apps a bit?
Do you feel that AVG is needed with microsoft security essentials now available and updating readily?
Looking into Driver Fusion right now....

 

[SantaMuerte]

Essential to me:

Office 2013
Fraps
MSI Afterburner
Google Chrome
Steam
Origin
Uplay
FileZilla
Free Download Manager
Team Viewer
Avast Professional 2014
Roccat Power Grid
.Net Framework 4.5
Visual Studio 2013
GPU Monitor Gadget
CPU Monitor Gadget
HD Tune Pro
K-Lite Mega Codec pack


Operating system of choice for games: Windows 8.1 Professional

 

[PhireSide]

Why do you turn off Indexing Service? It makes a huge difference to the speed of your searches.

Sorry, I meant to say I have it turned off on my SSD. Blonde moment

 

[Suberman]

Sorry, I meant to say I have it turned off on my SSD. Blonde moment

Yeah no need for indexing on SSD Sooo fast yum yum.

 

[Oj0]

Sorry, I meant to say I have it turned off on my SSD. Blonde moment

But still, why? It's even quicker enabled. SSD without indexing searches about as quickly as a mechanical drive with indexing, SSD with indexing is pretty much quicker than you can type.

 

[VPII]

Mind extrapolating the list of benching apps a bit?
Do you feel that AVG is needed with microsoft security essentials now available and updating readily?
Looking into Driver Fusion right now....

Usually I'll install all of the 3dmarks for which I have licenses paid for or received with hardware. As for AVG, I've just been using it for so long and it has never let me down....touching my office desk..... Driver Fusion I use to completely remove certain drivers which sometimes turn out to be an issue if not completely removed and installing the updated driver.

 

[Senshi]

Only reason you'd disable windows updates is because you don't have a legal version....

Also, why do people INSIST on using VLC, it's quite ****!

Use CCCP

CCCP - Combined Community Codec Pack

It's miles/years better than VLC and THEN some.

 

[gox1201]

Only reason you'd disable windows updates is because you don't have a legal version....

Also, why do people INSIST on using VLC, it's quite ****!

Use CCCP

CCCP - Combined Community Codec Pack

It's miles/years better than VLC and THEN some.

Must confess I've always used VLC, reason being is that it was great at the time I got it (many moons ago), and has always sort of stuck on my "to use" list for new pc's
Will have to have a look at CCCP

 

[PhireSide]

But still, why? It's even quicker enabled. SSD without indexing searches about as quickly as a mechanical drive with indexing, SSD with indexing is pretty much quicker than you can type.

Mainly because of less load on the memory cells. Less reads and writes should in theory give me a longer lifespan, plus I store no data on my SSD except Windows and my apps. Everything else I have moved to my 1TB drive, which is indexed

 

[Oj0]

Only reason you'd disable windows updates is because you don't have a legal version....

Also, why do people INSIST on using VLC, it's quite ****!

Use CCCP

CCCP - Combined Community Codec Pack

It's miles/years better than VLC and THEN some.

I disable Windows Update since it decides to restart my PC while I have work open but am not home. I do my updates manually when I have a scheduled restart.

If I use CCCP what do I use as a player? I need an alternative to WMP.

 

[gox1201]

Anyone have a list of fairly commonly used Benching / overclocking software?

Seeing as I bought all my hardware second hand, I didn't receive any with them of course.

 

[Senshi]

I disable Windows Update since it decides to restart my PC while I have work open but am not home. I do my updates manually when I have a scheduled restart.

If I use CCCP what do I use as a player? I need an alternative to WMP.

You can set windows to let you know when updates are available and not to automatically download and install them

CCCP uses MPC as it's base with the custom codecs installed, I have yet to find a file format it does not play (and adding realmedia/player support is just as easy).

 

[PhireSide]

Only reason you'd disable windows updates is because you don't have a legal version....

I keep mine off because of speed. I have one of the older gen SSD's (Agility 3) and it slows down a lot at bootup after I tried installing all the updates. I keep a Ghost image of my SSD as well so that if something goes wrong I just ghost it back from one of my data drives. I used to use Returnil but it seems to have a big performance impact, plus it's a hassle when I need to install a redist for a game or whatever

 

[Oj0]

Mainly because of less load on the memory cells. Less reads and writes should in theory give me a longer lifespan, plus I store no data on my SSD except Windows and my apps. Everything else I have moved to my 1TB drive, which is indexed

The Agility 3 is rated at 5,000 P/E cycles - that's 300,000 GB of writing. Assuming you keep the SSD for five years, here are your required sustained 24/7 write rates required to hit its rated life span (not kill it - that comes later) at the end of five years:

60,000 GB per year
5,000 GB per month
164.5 GB per day
6.85 GB per hour
117 MB per minute
1.95 MB per second - sustained 24/7 without a break for a single second.

In other words, you're not likely to hit the rated P/E cycle lifespan of the NAND within a decade even with REALLY heavy use (secure erasing more than once per day?). The thing which is most likely to fail is the controller, which seems to be based on age rather than reads/writes.

In the early days of SSDs it was recommended to do everything possible to keep the writes to a minimum, but that wasn't for longevity. It was due to the pathetic garbage collection (or lack thereof) on the early JMicron controllers which would cause stutters after a lot of random writing until the drive had been secure erased.

TL;DR you can go bos be*** with your SSD without hurting it

 

[PhireSide]

Dankie oom oMo

I'm like that 9GAG paranoid parrot, I unplug my PC when I hear even a faint rumble or see a little flash of lightning!

 

[Oj0]

You can set windows to let you know when updates are available and not to automatically download and install them

CCCP uses MPC as it's base with the custom codecs installed, I have yet to find a file format it does not play (and adding realmedia/player support is just as easy).

You realise I restart maybe three times per year? That means Windows annoys the *** out out of me telling me there are updates to be done? It's easier just manually doing all updates the morning I plan to restart.

Ah, MPC, just like K-Lite. I moved away from K-Lite because I prefer VLC to MPC. I find that VLC is the best player for corrupt videos - interrupted downloads, downloads in progress, etc. WMP and MPC don't like playing Youtube videos while they're downloading, VLC does it without issues. I can't stream 1080p because of my connection, and I find Youtube will only download a few minutes of video before stopping - even if I leave Youtube open for a few hours it'll download maybe 2 % of the video. Therefore, I download the 1080p video and can start watching it by the time around 70 % of the download is complete as opposed to downloading the entire thing first.

 

[roger m]

I prefer avira instead of avast or avg. Used all. Also use compressed function on the opera for browsing.

Sent from my Nokia 3310 using Tapatalk

 

[themank]

To streamline the installation of free stuff I use ninite. Save you searching and downloading manually. www.ninite.com

 

[PhireSide]

Anyone have a list of fairly commonly used Benching / overclocking software?

Seeing as I bought all my hardware second hand, I didn't receive any with them of course.

I think it all comes down to personal preference. Some will say Heaven/Valley is a good bench proggie; others 3DMark Vantage, and others Cinebench or Geekbench. I say do them all

Overclocking seems to favour MSI Afterburner as it works on almost all hardware and it has a monitoring utility as well. I used to use EVGA Precision but they all do the same thing underneath. I almost think Afterburner didn't allow me voltage control, whereas EVGA's proggie did.

What HW do you have if you don't mind me asking?

 

[gox1201]

[MENTION=2914]Wabbit16[/MENTION] Don't mind at all
4770k, asrock oc formula z87, 16gb corsair 2666, evga 770 acx classified 4gb, 256gb samsung 840 pro, 256gb ocz vertex 450, seasonic 760plat, corsair 750d, thermaltake water 3.0 extreme, Dell 27" 1440p. Not sure if I'm forgetting anything.

Need to get some software on it, built it tonight =-)