How to Overclock Your Monitor's Refresh Rate (Safely)

You can often squeeze extra refresh rate out of a monitor for free — 60Hz panels to 75Hz, 144Hz to 165–180Hz — by adding a custom rate in your GPU control panel or CRU, then testing for skipped frames. The payoff is smoother motion and a small latency win. This guide walks the safe way to do it, how to verify the overclock actually holds, and honest expectations for what it gets you.

A monitor overclock is free extra Hz — as long as you test that the panel actually displays every frame.

First: adjust your screen refresh rate in Windows

To adjust your screen refresh rate in Windows 11, open Settings → System → Display → Advanced display and choose the highest rate in the “Choose a refresh rate” dropdown. Do this before any overclock — a new monitor often runs at 60Hz until you change it, which throws away more Hz than any overclock adds.

1. Open Settings → System → Display, then select Advanced display. With more than one monitor, pick the right display at the top first.
2. Under Display information, check the current refresh rate and whether the display supports variable refresh rate (VRR).
3. Open the Choose a refresh rate dropdown and select the highest value.

Two things in that dropdown trip people up:

• The list only shows what the monitor reports. If your 144Hz or 240Hz monitor tops out at 60Hz there, the usual cause is the connection, not the panel: an older HDMI cable or port, or a cable plugged into the motherboard’s video output instead of the graphics card. See bandwidth and cables below.
• An asterisk (*) means the rate doesn’t work at your current resolution. Picking it changes your resolution to reach that refresh rate. To raise Hz without changing resolution, choose a rate without the asterisk.

On laptops with Dynamic refresh rate, Windows lowers the rate on the desktop to save power and raises it when needed. For gaming, select the fixed maximum rate instead.

Once Windows is running the monitor at its rated maximum, overclocking is how you go past it.

Is monitor overclocking safe?

Monitor overclocking is low-risk and fully reversible. Unlike GPU or CPU overclocking, there’s no heat, no wear, and no BIOS involved — you’re only asking the panel to refresh faster than its rated spec. If it can’t, the monitor shows a black screen or falls back to the last working rate, and you revert. The only real failure mode is skipped frames, where the panel accepts the higher rate but silently drops frames, which you’ll test for below.

Method 1: Your GPU control panel (easiest)

Both major GPUs let you add a custom refresh rate without extra software:

• NVIDIA: open the NVIDIA App (or Control Panel) → Display → Adjust desktop size area → Custom Resolution / Add. Enter your resolution and a higher refresh rate, test it, and apply.
• AMD: open AMD Software: Adrenalin → Display → Custom Resolutions → Create. Set the higher refresh rate and save.
• Intel: open the Intel Graphics Command Center → Display → Custom → Add and set a new refresh rate.

Start with a small bump (e.g. 60 → 65Hz) and increase in steps. After adding a custom rate, select it in Windows under Advanced display → Choose a refresh rate — creating the rate doesn’t switch the monitor to it.

Method 2: Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

CRU gives finer control and works across GPU brands. Add a detailed resolution with your target refresh rate, choose the CVT-RB / CVT-RBv2 timing standard (reduced blanking uses less bandwidth, so it overclocks further), then run CRU’s restart.exe and select the new rate in Windows Display Settings. CRU is also how you set stretched and custom resolutions — see how to get stretched resolution without CRU if you’d rather avoid it for that task.

Step up in small increments

Don’t jump straight to the highest number. Raise the refresh rate a few Hz at a time:

1. Add the next rate up (e.g. 144 → 150Hz).
2. Apply it and confirm the desktop still displays.
3. Run the frame-skipping test (next section).
4. If it’s clean, try the next step up. If it skips or blacks out, drop back.

Keep the highest rate that passes the frame-skipping test cleanly.

Test for skipped frames (the critical step)

A refresh rate that displays isn’t necessarily a refresh rate that shows every frame. Some panels accept a higher rate but drop frames to keep up — which is worse than not overclocking, because motion looks uneven and the latency benefit disappears.

• Open the TestUFO frame-skipping test in your browser at the overclocked rate.
• A clean overclock shows an even, continuous pattern of stripes. Skipping shows duplicated or missing stripes.
• For a second opinion, photograph the moving pattern with a phone camera — dropped frames show as gaps.

If you see skipping, step the refresh rate back down until the test is perfectly clean.

Bandwidth and cables matter

The higher you push refresh rate, the more bandwidth you need. DisplayPort has the most headroom; HDMI varies by version. If a higher rate won’t hold, try a DisplayPort connection or use CRU’s CVT-RBv2 reduced-blanking timing to fit inside the available bandwidth. See HDMI vs DisplayPort for gaming for how the connections compare.

What overclocking actually gets you

Be honest about the gains:

• Smoother motion — the main benefit. Extra refreshes mean cleaner tracking and panning.
• A small latency win. Each finished frame waits less to display: 60→75Hz cuts it from ~16.7 ms to ~13.3 ms; 144→165Hz from ~6.9 ms to ~6.1 ms.
• Not a lag fix. Overclocking won’t rescue a low frame rate or high system latency. For those, fix FPS and the Windows layer first — see how to minimize input delay.

Enable G-Sync/FreeSync and cap FPS below your new refresh so the overclock stays tear-free. And raise the Windows timer resolution with Tier1Suite so input sampling keeps pace at the higher rate.

Related guides

• 60Hz vs 144Hz for gaming: is the upgrade worth it?
• How to optimize your monitor for gaming and reduce input delay
• Is 144Hz worth it vs 240Hz for competitive gaming?
• HDMI vs DisplayPort for gaming
• How to fix screen tearing in games