Which drivers do I need for my desktop PC after installing Windows?

Introduction

After a clean Windows reinstallation, your desktop PC needs the appropriate device drivers for its hardware. Depending on your configuration, these may include drivers for the chipset, network, audio, graphics card and other components.

Exactly which drivers you need depends on the hardware in your PC. Desktop systems can be configured with a wide variety of mainboards, processors, graphics cards, network controllers and other components. There is therefore no single driver list that applies to every system.

Your order confirmation or invoice is the best place to start. It lists the most important components installed in your system. In Windows, you can also use Device Manager to check which hardware has been detected and which devices may still be missing drivers.

To make sure that the most important drivers are available immediately after reinstalling Windows, we include a USB thumb drive with each shipped desktop PC. It contains an extensive collection of drivers and software for all the many hardware components that we offer. Since the same USB drive is used for many different desktop configurations, it also contains drivers for hardware that may not be installed in your particular PC.

The USB drive is divided into three main sections:

You do not need to install every file on the USB drive. Only install the packages that match your PC's configuration.

Windows already came pre-installed? No additional drivers required!

If you ordered your PC with Windows pre-installed, you do not need to install any additional drivers. We already installed all drivers and software packages that match your PC's configuration, including only those optional drivers and software packages, that we recommend for your system.

See also:

• My new PC has arrived. What should I do first?

If you ordered your PC with Windows pre-installed, you can stop reading here. Keep the USB drive as an offline source for a future Windows reinstallation.

Manually installing drivers on a fresh Windows install

If you ordered your PC without an operating system, install Windows first. Then install the drivers for your configuration from the USB thumb drive that came with your PC.

The USB drives are prepared in larger batches. As a result, newer driver versions may already be available by the time your system is delivered.

This is not a problem. The USB drive provides a reliable starting point for installing Windows. Afterwards, you can use Windows Update and, if necessary, the download pages of the respective hardware manufacturers. The primary purpose of the USB drive is to ensure that the drivers required for our desktop configurations are available even without an internet connection.

See also:

• How to do a clean Windows reinstallation
• Where can I find the latest drivers and firmware updates for my desktop PC?

Which mainboard drivers do I need?

First, open the "Mainboard" folder.

The drivers are sorted by manufacturer and exact mainboard model. To find out which mainboard is installed in your PC, please check your order confirmation e-mail or invoice.

Open the folder for your installed mainboard and install the drivers that correspond to the hardware actually installed in your system. Depending on the platform, these may include:

• Chipset
• Audio
• LAN
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• Intel Management Engine
• Serial IO
• Other platform-specific components

We recommend installing the chipset driver first. For the remaining device drivers, the exact installation order does not matter.

Some mainboards come with alternating component drivers

Even within the folder for your exact mainboard, there may be several drivers for the same type of device. This can happen because a mainboard may use different Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or network controllers depending on the production batch, may contain several controllers at the same time, or may support certain functions only with specific processors.

Therefore, only install the packages that match the hardware actually installed in your system. Your order confirmation and exact mainboard model provide the first point of reference. If several variants are available, you can usually identify the installed controller in Windows Device Manager.

As a last measure, you can also open the device properties in Device Manager and view its hardware ID. This allows the manufacturer and controller to be identified precisely.

See also:

• How to check Windows Device Manager for missing or incomplete drivers

Optional drivers for hardware or functions that are not present in your system do not need to be installed. This may include but is not limited to components such as alternative Wi-Fi variants, an NPU or RAID/RST. If you are still unable to determine which driver applies to your system, our support team will be happy to help you choose the correct one.

Do I need RAID, RST or VMD drivers?

RAID, RST and VMD are used to combine multiple SSDs or hard drives into a single logical drive. If you do not know what RAID is, you are probably not using this feature. In that case, you do not need the corresponding RAID/RST/VMD drivers.

See also: What is RAID and is there still any use for it?

Which graphics driver should I install?

The "Graphics_Card" folder contains graphics drivers for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA.

You can also find the dedicated graphics card installed in your PC in your order confirmation. Install the corresponding AMD Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce driver.

NVIDIA Game Ready or Studio Driver?

NVIDIA systems may have several driver variants available on the USB drive.

For most users, and particularly for gaming, the Game Ready Driver is the standard recommendation.

The Studio Driver is aimed more specifically at certain professional content-creation applications and follows a different validation and release cycle at NVIDIA.

Drivers for "NVIDIA RTX" graphics cards are only intended for systems equipped with these special, professional GPUs ("NVIDIA RTX"; not "GeForce RTX").

Should I *unselect* the NVIDIA App when I install or update an NVIDIA graphics driver?

We do recommend installing the NVIDIA App alongside the NVIDIA graphics driver. Unlike the former GeForce Experience, the NVIDIA App has become the central configuration tool for modern GeForce graphics cards and GeForce laptop GPUs. NVIDIA has consolidated both the functionality of GeForce Experience and the remaining supported features of the classic NVIDIA Control Panel into the NVIDIA App.

Unlike its predecessor GeForce Experience, most NVIDIA App features no longer require an NVIDIA account. Sign-in is only required for certain online functions where an account is specifically needed.

We have compiled further information about the NVIDIA App in this article.

Do I also need drivers for integrated Intel or AMD graphics?

If your processor has an integrated GPU (iGPU) in addition to the dedicated GPU (dGPU), we generally recommend installing that iGPU driver as well. The iGPU can be used for tasks such as hardware-accelerated video playback, video encoding or other workloads even if the monitor is connected directly to the dedicated graphics card.

See also:

• Can I use Intel QuickSync (accelerated video encoding) even when my dedicated GPU is providing the display output?

Not every CPU has an integrated graphics unit. If your CPU does not have an iGPU, you do not need to install any such driver. If your processor does have an iGPU but you deliberately do not want to use it, you might be able to disable it in BIOS Setup, depending on the particular mainboard model.

What do I need from the "Tools" folder?

This folder contains additional software that, depending on the installed hardware, provides RGB, monitoring and tuning functions.

These packages are not required device drivers. Instead, they provide additional software for controlling certain chassis components or tuning software from some of the mainboard and GPU vendor. You should definitely not install all of these tools at the same time.

Our desktop PCs are already shipped with sensible default settings regarding performance profiles and fan curves. To achieve a good out-of-the-box experience for you, RGB lighting is also preconfigured by us via hardware-stored firmware profiles, wherever possible.

Therefore, if you prefer to keep your Windows installation as lean as possible, you can initially skip these additional programs entirely and install them only later if needed. If, on the other hand, you want to adjust RGB lighting, fan control or other supported functions yourself, you will find the appropriate software here.

If your PC came with Windows pre-installed, we already install the programs that belong to the respective configuration or that we recommend for the system.

The matching software can usually be identified directly by the manufacturer:

Most tools are not only tied to one single component. They often overlap in terms of RGB, fan-control or monitoring functionality. It is therefore best to install these packages piece by piece, and first test the full extend of each program's capabilities, before installing the next one.

Do I really need to install every unfamiliar driver?

An unfamiliar driver name does not automatically mean that the driver is not important.

Platform drivers such as chipset, Management Engine, Serial IO or similar components may handle functions that are not immediately visible within Windows. If such drivers are  included in your hardware component's driver list, it should therefore be installed.

The exception is optional functionality that your system does not use - for example, RAID.

See also:

• Do I need *all* drivers or is it enough to just install the most essential ones?

The article includes a list of common platform drivers and abbreviations and explains the specific functions behind them. This should help you identify which drivers are standard platform components (install them all), and which may only describe optional variants that might not be installed in your systems (those you can skip).