backstory: I've been playing counter strike: go since 2016. Playing at internet cafes always felt way smoother, responsive than at home. Over the years, I was constantly upgrading my home pc with new/used components, sometimes even buying full used rigs from people or small builder services. I’ve tried all kinds of setups. The game always felt choppy, and things got worse around the 2018-2019 after faceit ac update when windows 7 support ended. That’s when you had to enable Secure Boot in BIOS and switch to newer windows versions. Since then, I’ve gone through pretty much every Windows 8 and 10 build you can imagine — stock, LTSC, LTSB, Revios, Enterprise. I followed RAM timing guides, BIOS tweaks, registry edits, diffent GPU driver install techniques, bios firmware… I went absolutely down the rabbit hole........................
I even thought the issue might be electricity or my crappy gpon isp.
since I work in web dev, I got curious: how do large data centers or trading firms set up their hardware for low latency? These guys have conferences where they analyze 10-20 lines of high-performance code for hours, choose the most latency-optimized Linux kernel configs, and fine-tune CPU behavior.
I spent hours on forums looking into how they deal with dirty/harmonics power filtering, but all I really found was a general recommendation to ground your hardware. Nothing like "THIS IS CRUCIAL" or anything — just casual advice.
so here’s the biggest takeaway I got from all of this: power delivery issues(emi, rfi, hormonics) is not the bottleneck in ultra-low-latency systems. If EMI or electrical noise really made that much of a difference, those guys would be writing books on which toroidal isolation transformer gives you the lowest latency for your next custom kernel build.
eventually, I admitted to myself — I don’t want to dig into this crap anymore. after all those years tweaking os settings, overclocking, bios versions, and getting nowhere… I just gave up on chasing phantoms. I came to the conclusion that the problem is in hardware compatibility
so I decided to build a completely new pc strictly following manufacturer guidelines. picked motherboard, chose ram from the supported list, bought a high-quality PSU, and got a physical retail copy of Windows 11. It was super important for me that every single component was brand new and factory-sealed, so I ordered everything from the us and had it shipped to the CIS.
My build:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600 (Box version, NOT tray!)
Arctic Freezer 36
XPG Lancer Blade 32 GB (2x16GB) DDR5 CL30, model: AX5U6000C3016G-DTLABBK
Samsung 990 Pro 1TB PCIe 4.0
Super Flower Leadex III ATX 3.1 1000W
ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI
I also paid attention to details I never cared about before — stuff that was in the manuals:
installed RAM in the correct slots (before I just inserted sticks through 1 to make the dual channel work)
the board has both 1xpcie 4.0 and 4xpcie 5.0 slots. at first, i wanted to use the pcie 5.0 one because it's in the spotlight location, but after researching, I went with the pcie 4.0 slot for better compatibility, and it’s next to the chipset. The 5.0 slot is right under the cpu, and users reported overheating (up to +20°C at idle) from cpu heat bleeding onto the ssd.
os install process: before installing Windows, I changed bios to secure boot and made sure ftpm was enabled (needed for faceit ac). i did a standard win 11 home install, choosing default options wherever possible. Important: set your correct region so the time zone syncs automatically. after i let windows install all the drivers itself, then installed all the latest updates via windows update.
then i installed AI Suite 3 (from ASUS) — gui for tuning/overclocking — and just used the automatic oc tuning options it provided.
next, i installed Steam, downloaded CS2, and wiped all my CS2 saves from the Steam Cloud.
Order matters. Why?
if i install a “clean” GPU driver manually without internet on first boot? → desync
if i pick wrong time zone → system timer breaks -> desync
if i reinstall windows and forgot to clear tpm key? -> desync
if i i dsable xbox overlay? -> desync. It’s like a blockchain: mess up one step, and the whole chain breaks, one wrong step where you provided the os with incorrect data, other dependencies took data from its api, the os is not synchronized
result: I got the best smoothness, input response, and mouse movement I've ever felt. mouse sensitivity feels static — not dynamic and floaty. rapid trigger keyboard feels insanely responsive, after installing faceit ac, the game stayed smooth (before this, enabling faceit ac on my old PC would completely kill input delay — made CS2 feel like I was using a $10 Genius keyboard)
important note: all of this improved only the client-side experience, I still play faceit with 50ms ping and definitely feel that players with 5–20ms have an adventage when peeking — or when I peek them. But think this is a low netcode thing.
$10 usb-to-ethernet adapter fixed a problem I’ve had for years. i used motherboards with different NICs, tried multiple routers, QOS settings, Cat5/Cat6 SFTP cables, upd tweaks, wi-fi, 4g… nothing fixed ferrari peeks from enemies it — until this usb-ethernet cord. my exact model: DEXP AT-UH002B with a Realtek 8153 chip.
