The BRUTAL blog
Practical guides to a faster Windows PC, steadier games and your network, with the reasons behind each step.
Recent posts
Windows Performance
Best Windows Power Plan for Gaming: Honest Guide
A straight comparison of Balanced, High performance and Ultimate Performance, with the real mechanisms and reversible powercfg steps.
Gaming & FPS
How to Fix Stuttering in Games (Frametime Spikes)
Stutter is a frametime problem, not an average-FPS one — isolate the real causes and confirm each fix with 1% lows.
Anti-Cheat & Safety
Should You Disable Windows Defender for Gaming?
Disabling Defender for FPS is a bad trade: tiny gain, real security and anti-cheat risk. Use targeted folder exclusions instead.
Anti-Cheat & Safety
Anti-Cheat and PC Optimization: The 4 Bright Lines
The four bright lines that separate safe user-mode tweaks from the tools that get your game account flagged.
Myths & Honest Truths
Should You Defrag an SSD? No - Here's Why
Defragging an SSD is pointless and wears it out. Here's what flash actually needs - TRIM and ReTrim - and how to check it.
Windows Performance
Fix High RAM Usage in Windows (Without Boosters)
Why high RAM usage is usually cache working as designed, and how to find a real memory hog or leak with tools you already have.
Disk, Drive & Cleanup
How to Free Up Disk Space in Windows (Safely)
Reclaim real disk space in Windows safely - temp, caches, dumps and WinSxS via DISM, with a 24h age gate and verified freed bytes, not marketing numbers.
Myths & Honest Truths
Core Parking and CPU Unparking: Myth vs Reality
What core parking really does, why unparking rarely moves FPS on modern Windows, and the few narrow cases where it matters.
Windows Performance
Fix 100% Disk Usage in Windows (Real Causes)
100% disk is a symptom to diagnose by culprit - HDD, SysMain, indexing, a stuck update - and an old hard drive is often the real answer.
Gaming & FPS
FPS Overlays and Anti-Cheat: Why No Injection Matters
Why an fps overlay that reads present frames from outside the game beats one that injects into it, and how to read 1% lows and frametimes properly.
Anti-Cheat & Safety
Is BRUTAL Optimizer Safe With Valorant?
Why BRUTAL Optimizer runs alongside Riot Vanguard with nothing of its own inside Valorant: no kernel driver, no DirectX hook, no injection.
Myths & Honest Truths
Bigger Pagefile Performance: Myth vs Reality
Why a huge pagefile won't add FPS and deleting it won't free RAM, plus the one honest setting that's right for almost everyone.
Try it on your own PC.
Free for Windows 10 and 11. Each module is listed before it runs, and registry changes keep their own Undo.