So you've purchased a monitor that offers a 120Hz or 144Hz refresh rate and plugged it in–great! But don't stop there. Your monitor may non actually run at its advertised refresh rate until you change some settings and sort out your hardware.

Prepare Your Refresh Rate in Windows

Virtually importantly, you lot'll want to ensure Windows is actually set at the advertised refresh rate and not a lower refresh rate, like 60Hz.

On Windows 10, head to Settings > Organization > Display > Advanced Display Settings > Display Adapter Properties. Click the "Monitor" tab, choose your monitor'south advertised refresh rate from the "Screen Refresh Rate" list, and click "OK".

On Windows vii or viii, right-click the desktop and select "Screen Resolution". Select your monitor (if you have multiple monitors) and then click the "Advanced Settings" link. Click the "Monitor" tab and choose the refresh rate from the "Screen Refresh Rate" box.

If you don't see your monitor's advertised refresh rate in this listing—or if you tin't seem to get your monitor to stay configured at the advertised refresh charge per unit—at that place's more y'all need to do.

Check Your Cables

You tin't merely use any quondam cable and await a high refresh rate. Some monitors may have both HDMI and DisplayPort connections, merely may be express to a 60Hz refresh rate when connected via HDMI. In this case, you'd demand to use a DisplayPort cable. Check your monitor's specifications or setup guide for more information.

You don't but have to worry about the blazon of cable, either–you take to worry about the cable itself.

If you're using DisplayPort, be certain y'all have a properly certified cable that's built to the DisplayPort specification. A properly manufactured, certified cablevision built for DisplayPort 1.2 should work perfectly fine with DisplayPort 1.4. Unfortunately, there are a lot of poor quality cables out there, so a cable built and sold for DisplayPort 1.2 may non work with DisplayPort one.4. There are as well a few Reduced Bit Rate (RBR) DisplayPort cables on the market that will simply support 1080p—just brand certain you lot don't have 1 of those. Visit the official DisplayPort website for more information.

If you're using HDMI, you lot'll desire to ensure you're using a "high speed" HDMI cable and not an older "standard" HDMI cable. Notwithstanding, yous don't demand an HDMI cable with Ethernet included. Visit the official HDMI website for more information.

When in doubt, use the cable your monitor came with. It should work–in theory. Unfortunately, inexpensive, low-quality cables tin besides crusade problems. Your monitor's included cablevision might not fifty-fifty be good enough. We recently found that the included cable with an ASUS monitor couldn't provide a stable signal at 144Hz. Instead, the screen would occasionally flicker and the refresh rate would drib downward to 60Hz until nosotros rebooted the computer. Nosotros replaced the cable with a higher-quality Accell DisplayPort cablevision and the monitor operated fine at 144Hz without any flickering or refresh rate drops.

As always, brand certain your cables are securely continued. If you're experiencing a trouble, attempt unplugging the cablevision and plugging it back in to ensure a solid connection. A loose cable connectedness could crusade problems.

More Troubleshooting Tips

RELATED: How to Update Your Graphics Drivers for Maximum Gaming Functioning

Lots of other issues could crusade your monitor to not part at its advertised refresh rate:

  • Your estimator's GPU isn't good enough. Integrated graphics or older discrete graphics might not support your monitor's refresh rate. Be sure your graphics carte du jour supports the monitor's resolution and refresh rate.
  • Yous demand to update your graphics drivers. Exist sure to install the latest bachelor version from NVIDIA or AMD'due south website.
  • Yous're attempting to run your monitor at a lower resolution. Select your monitor's native resolution–it may just support the higher refresh charge per unit at its native resolution and be limited to 60Hz at lower resolutions.
  • You lot're playing a game and that game has its own integrated graphics settings. You may need to select your monitor'southward native resolution and the refresh charge per unit of 120Hz or 144Hz in each game's graphics options bill of fare or that game may use a lower refresh rate.

Hopefully, after going through these steps, you'll find that your monitor runs in its butter-smoothen high refresh charge per unit.

Paradigm Credit: Lalneema