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A computer system is built out of different hardware components. Some of these parts are simple, in terms of what they do and how they’re used. Think, ports, fans, wireless networking cards, Bluetooth radios, etc. Other elements can get a little more complicated, for example, consider a CPU, a GPU, or RAM.
The hardware on any system, regardless of whether pre-built or if you built it yourself, comes with factory settings that allow it to run at an optimal level. The settings will allow the hardware to work well with a wide range of hardware but that also means they’re working below their maximum capacity.
Since factory settings are generally configured with some of the most powerful components on a PC to run below their maximum capacity, users go to great lengths to change them. Settings for hardware components like the GPU normally aren’t locked from being changed, but an app will be required for the job.
MSI Afterburner is one of the most popular tools for overclocking a GPU. It has an excellent, and relatively, easy-to-use interface. You must have some experience as to what you’re doing, but even if you’re not looking to overclock and/or overvolt the GPU, MSI Afterburner is an excellent tool for monitoring the GPU, CPU, and system temperature, among other things.
1. MSI Afterburner Download
MSI Afterburner is free to use. You can download it here and run the EXE file to install it. You will need admin rights to install the app – but that holds for all apps that are installed on Windows 10.
2. Install MSI Afterburner
During installation, Afterburner will ask to install RivaTuner Statistics Server. It’s a tool used to overclock a GPU and it is essential if you plan on using Afterburner for overclocking.
If not, you can skip installing it however, you will not be able to use certain Afterburner features.
RivaTuner Statistics Server is a good, stable, app. You won’t find many overclocking tools that do not rely on it.
Additional apps
Afterburner has quite a few features the app will not install, without enabling other features – even if you decide to install RivaTuner with it.
For example, the Kombuster app was developed by the same folks that created Afterburner. It must be installed if you want to run a stability test on your GPU. If you overclock your GPU, running a stability test afterward is the first step in troubleshooting and that’s when Kombuster will come in handy.
3. Afterburner GUI & Settings
Afterburner has a GUI similar to a dashboard for quick changing settings and applying them. The dashboard allows you to overclock, overvolt, or even reset your GPU. It is also where you can set a custom speed for the fans if your rig has a GPU fan and a CPU fan.
They can be set up to run in sync, or asynchronously. The choice is yours.
The GUI gives you a quick overview of the system’s health; the current GPU core clock, memory clock, power consumption, and temperature.
The Settings panel of the Afterburner is accessible by clicking the cogwheel button where you can configure additional features. It’s almost like a second GUI for operating the app where you can enable overlays, select what system vitals you want to monitor within a game, and set up hotkeys for Afterburner’s various features.
RivaTuner Server Settings
If you use MSI Afterburner, and you’ve installed RivaTuner, you should know that it has its own settings panel. It’s something you should familiarize yourself with, especially if you intend to use Afterburner’s overlay and monitoring features.
RivaTuner adds an icon to the system tray and when you double-click it, you get access to its settings panel.
4. MSI Afterburner Features
MSI Afterburner has an extensive list of features, too many to list, but we’re going to mention the more impressive ones.
- Overclock and overvolt a GPU.
- Control fan speed.
- Monitor GPU usage, temperature.
- Add overlays for GPU and CPU usage and temperature.
- Run benchmark tests on the GPU.
- Take screenshots and record screencasts.
- Create profiles for hardware settings and easily switch between them.
- Log GPU and CPU usage history.
Limitations
MSI Afterburner does not have a lot of limitations however, it may not work with older hardware, particularly older GPUs that are more than ten years old. Other than that, it’s a great tool.
Fake MSI Afterburner targets Windows gamers with miners, info-stealers
Windows gamers and power users are being targeted by fake MSI Afterburner download portals to infect users with cryptocurrency miners and the RedLine information-stealing malware.
The MSI Afterburner is a GPU utility that allows you to configure overclocking, create fan profiles, perform video capturing, and monitor your installed graphics cards’ temperature and CPU utilization.
While created by MSI, the utility can be used by users of almost all graphics cards, leading to its use by millions of gamers worldwide who tweak settings to improve game performance, make their GPUs more silent, and achieve lower temperatures.
However, the tool’s popularity has also made it a good target for threat actors, who are looking to target Windows users with powerful GPUs that can be hijacked for cryptocurrency mining.
Impersonating MSI Afterburner
According to a new report by Cyble, over 50 websites impersonating the official MSI Afterburner site have appeared online in the past three months, pushing XMR (Monero) miners along with information-stealing malware.
Malicious website pushing laced MSI Afterburner (Cyble)
The campaign used domains that could trick users into thinking they were visiting the legitimate MSI website and which are easier to promote using BlackSEO. Some of the domains spotted by Cyble are listed below:
- msi-afterburner—download.
site - msi-afterburner-download.site
- msi-afterburner-download.tech
- msi-afterburner-download.online
- msi-afterburner-download.store
- msi-afterburner-download.ru
- msi-afterburner.download
- mslafterburners.com
- msi-afterburnerr.com
In other cases, the domains did not resemble the MSI brand and were likely promoted via direct messages, forums, and social media posts. Examples include:
- git[.]git[.]skblxin[.]matrizauto[.]net
- git[.]git[.]git[.]skblxin[.]matrizauto[.]net
- git[.]git[.]git[.]git[.]skblxin[.]matrizauto[.]net
- git[.]git[.]git[.]git[.]git[.]skblxin[.]matrizauto[.]net
Stealthy mining while stealing your passwords
When the fake MSI Afterburner setup file (MSIAfterburnerSetup.msi) is executed, the legitimate Afterburner program will be installed. However, the installer will also quietly drop and run the RedLine information-stealing malware and an XMR miner in the compromised device.
The miner is installed through a 64-bit Python executable named ‘browser_assistant.exe’ in the local Program Files directory, which injects a shell into the process created by the installer.
This shellcode retrieves the XMR miner from a GitHub repository and injects it directly into memory in the explorer.exe process. Since the miner never touches the disk, the chances of being detected by security products are minimized.
The miner connects to its mining pool using a hardcoded username and password and then collects and exfiltrates basic system data to the threat actors.
One of the arguments the XMR miner uses is ‘CPU max threads’ set to 20, topping most modern CPU thread count, so it’s set to capture all available power.
XMRminer argument details (Cyble)
The miner is set to mine only after 60 minutes since the CPU has entered idling, meaning that the infected computer is not running any resource-intensive tasks and is most likely left unattended.
Also, it uses the «-cinit-stealth-targets» argument, which is an option to pause mining activity and clear GPU memory when specific programs listed under «stealth targets» are launched.
These could be process monitors, antivirus tools, hardware resource viewers, and other tools that help the victim spot the malicious process.
In this case, the Windows applications from which the miner attempts to hide are Taskmgr.exe, ProcessHacker.exe, perfmon.exe, procexp.exe, and procexp64.exe.
While the miner is quietly hijacking your computer’s resources to mine Monero, RedLine has already run in the background stealing your passwords, cookies, browser information, and, potentially, any cryptocurrency wallets.
Unfortunately, almost all of this fake MSI Afterburner campaign’s components have poor antivirus software detection.
VirusTotal reports that the malicious ‘MSIAfterburnerSetup.msi’ setup file is only detected by three security products out of 56, while the ‘browser_assistant.
exe’ is only detected by 2 out of 67 products.
To stay safe from miners and malware, download tools directly from official sites rather than sites shared in forums, social media, or direct messages.
In this case, the legitimate MSI Afterburner can be downloaded directly from MSI at www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards.
How to use MSI Afterburner in games (setup)
MSI Afterburner is a well-known utility for overclocking video cards. However, it can be used not only for overclocking, but also for displaying various technical information. So, for example, you can configure the display of the FPS counter in games, the temperature of the processor and video card, operating frequencies, processor load, and much more.
Where to download MSI Afterburner
To use MSI Afterburner in games, you first need to download and install it. If you have already done this, then go straight ahead
You can download this extremely useful utility from the official MSI website.
Go to the link: MSI Afterburner, and click the button to download the installer:
Unzip the program installer file and run it. Leave all installer settings at their defaults when choosing installation options. As a result, 2 programs should be installed on the computer:
- MSI Afterburner
- RivaTuner Statistics Server
Both programs can be found in the start menu. The RivaTuner Statistics Server program is needed to display information over the game (FPS, temperature, frequencies, etc.), and MSI Afterburner manages this program. nine0003
Read also: RivaTuner Statistics Server — what it is and how to use it
How to configure MSI Afterburner for use in games
we will.
First you need to configure the program settings, to do this, open the settings by clicking on the gear button:0003
It is possible not to do this. Then each time the program will have to be run manually before starting any game, which is not very convenient.
Now let’s get to the fun part: go to the «Monitoring» tab. There are 2 important items to set up here (see screenshot below):
- On/off switch for a particular schedule.
- EOS activation ( o verley e crane d display)
Select the parameters we need to track by turning them on or off with checkbox 1 (see screenshot above). On each selected parameter that we want to see over the game, we click, and below we put the checkbox 2 «Show in OED». It is the «Show in OED» checkbox that activates the display of the chart in the in-game overlay. nine0003
Please note that the names of the graphs can be dragged up or down, thereby adjusting the order in which they are displayed on the game screen.
I configured my computer to display the following information:
- CPU temperature
- RAM load
- GPU2 load
- Frame rate
over the game. My «CPU temperature» is displayed not only in the game, but also constantly hangs in the tray, since I checked the «Show in the icon in the taskbar» box:
How to use MSI Afterburner in games
There is only a little left to do — configure hotkeys to activate/deactivate the display of the information we have chosen during the game.
To do this, go to the «OED» tab. In this tab, click in the «Toggle visibility of the OED» field, and press the keyboard shortcut that is convenient for us. I installed Ctrl+Shift+F11:
At this point, the basic settings for using MSI Afterburner in games are complete. To check, we launch any game, and press the key combination that we set above. When you press the set keyboard shortcut, the display of the selected information over the game should be activated / deactivated. nine0003
If you did everything right, the game will display all the information you selected:
Now you know how to use MSI Afterburner in games.
RivaTuner Statistics Server
At the very beginning of the article, I said that 2 programs should be installed: MSI Afterburner and RivaTunerStatistics Server. Setting this program is optional, but it can be used to configure some other settings that are not available in MSI AfterBurner.
We will deal with setting up RivaTuner Statistics Server in the following article: RivaTuner Statistics Server — what is it and how to use it.
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MSI Afterburner how to use when overclocking AMD
graphics card
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You can use MSI Afterburner to adjust the fan speed based on temperature and to overclock your Radeon graphics card. The program can work with any video cards, but only NVIDIA and AMD Radeon branded cards work with all the sliders, and with other video cards there may be problems and sometimes the voltage sliders do not move in MSI Afterburner.
Created graphics overclock MSI Afterburner will run on system startup
To properly configure MSI Afterburner, you first need to make sure that the settings you made for overclocking and cooling are applied on subsequent Windows starts. To do this, in the main window of the program, you need to click on the inscription Apply overclocking at system startup and the green circle in front of the inscription should light up.
Adjusting the fan speed
The next thing to do is to adjust the speed of the video card cooler, and for this you need to open the settings.
nine0003 Overclocking done by MSI Afterburner will start with the system
To open the program settings, click on the button Settings . A window called MSI Afterburner Properties will open. In this window, you need to go to the tab Cooler .
Configuring video card cooling in Afterburner
In the window that opens, check the box next to Enable software user auto mode and a custom graphics card fan speed graph will immediately appear. To build a graph, you need to left-click on the line and, without releasing the mouse button, drag to the right place. In this graph, you need to set the fan speed to 100 percent at a temperature of 85 degrees and above, and the initial fan speed when the computer is idle should be stable and it is individual for each video card. When you build your curve for changing the cooler rotation speed, click the OK button in the window and the settings will close. After that, you need to start some game and play it for 15 minutes.
After exiting the game in the monitoring window of the MSI Afterburner program, you should make sure that the temperature of the video card has not risen too high. If the temperature rises to 90 degrees at maximum fan speed, then it is not necessary to overclock the video card.
Overclocking AMD Radeon
After setting up the video card cooling, you can start overclocking through MSI Afterburner. In the main window of the program, the video card is overclocked, but before you start overclocking with MSI Afterburner, you need to activate the voltage sliders. Open the program settings and check the boxes Unlock voltage control and Unlock voltage monitoring then save the settings by pressing the OK button and the settings window will close.
To overclock the MSI Afterburner video card, you need to activate the voltage sliders. You need to start overclocking a video card through MSI Afterburner from the Core Clock item, increasing it by only 10 points, click on the Apply button.
If no distortion has occurred and no dots or stripes have appeared on the monitor, then you can move on to the next Memory Clock parameter and increase it by 10 points too. If you increase the parameters very much in this way, then you will need to slightly increase the voltage of the video card, but in this case the video card will start to heat up more and you will need to test it on some game. After playing a game for 15 minutes and if the video card does not heat up more than 90 degrees, you can leave these parameters.
When increasing the next characteristic, sometimes a failure may occur and your computer will reboot and all parameters will return to the factory settings. Therefore, write down or remember how many points you have already added so as not to start overclocking the video card again. If you did not like the overclocking of the video card you made, you can press the Reset button and all settings will return to the factory settings.
MSI Afterburner monitoring in games
After overclocking the video card, you can configure MSI Afterburner for games, that is, to display the necessary parameters with the current video card performance in the game window.