If you have a PC build that can comfortably run 4K resolution at a high frame rate, then it is a no-brainer to want your 4K monitor to display its amazing graphics at 60Hz or even 120Hz.

At the end of the day, by spending thousands of dollars on your setup, you would expect to be able to play at the best possible graphics that both your PC and gaming monitor can handle.

So, in this guide, I’m going to show you how to get 60Hz on a 4K monitor, and then I’ll show you how to get 120Hz on a 4K monitor too.

I’ll also show you how to achieve all this with no screen tearing or any other performance-related issues.

How to Get 60 Hz on a 4K Monitor

Getting 60 Hz on a 1920x1080p monitor is easy. You can pretty much achieve that with any connectivity cable that you find in the box with all the old cables. However, when it comes to achieving this frequency in 4K, the story is completely different.

As 4K technology is fairly new, especially to gaming, the standard HDMI is unfortunately non-compatible. So, an unsuitable HDMI cable is a pretty good reason why your 4k monitor is stuck at 30hz. In fact, even HDMI 2.0 isn’t officially good enough when it comes to generating 60 Hz frequency at 4K. Only HDMI 2.1 is.

So, if you are wondering how to get 60hz on a 4K monitor, the safest route would be to just go for a DisplayPort 1.3.

From then on, as always, you can change up the graphical settings that you desire your monitor to display within the game that you are playing.

How to Get 120 Hz on a 4K Monitor

If you are lucky enough to own a GPU in the likes of a GTX 2080 Ti that can comfortably run at 120 FPS in 4K resolution, I can see why you would want 120 Hz. As we said above, technically speaking, HDMI can be a bit of a pain when it comes to supporting this high frequency in 4K resolution.

So, to save you the headache, even though HDMI is more popular, I’d recommend you to go for a DisplayPort 1.3 which is able to support 4K 120 Hz with ease thanks to its pretty amazing bandwidth of nearly 30 Gbps.

Also Read: How to Get 120 Hz on a Gaming TV from Your PC

Setting up 4K at 120 Hz: Step-By-Step

Now that you know what cables you need to run higher frequencies at 4K resolution, let me show you exactly how to work the settings in case you are wondering how to get 120hz on a 4k monitor. Simply, follow the step-by-step guide below.

  1. Ensure that your DisplayPort 1.3 is plugged in both your GPU and your 4K monitor.
  2. Then, right-click on your desktop > Display Settings > Advanced Display Settings > Display Adapter Properties For [your monitor] > Under the Adapter tab, click on “List All Modes”, and scroll down until you see “3080 by 2160, True Color (32 bit), 120 Hertz”
  3. Click save, apply and you are ready to go and play games in 120 FPS at 4K resolution.