The Rust Optimization Guide
A catalog of PC tweaks for the game Rust (Unity engine, heavily CPU-bound), ordered the way people actually apply them: five tiers, from in-game settings anyone can change to BIOS territory. Go down the tiers until you run out of comfort - each entry says exactly what to do, how to undo it, and how much we trust the claim. The impact badge means "how often this is the thing actually holding a machine back" - it is not a promised FPS number.
Computed, never copied
No magic numbers from someone else's machine. Where a value depends on your hardware, the entry shows the arithmetic and you compute it from your own core count, RAM and monitor.
Evidence, labeled
measured A/B tested on our reference machine, stated on what hardware. consensus community-established. vendor official vendor or Microsoft/Facepunch guidance. inference reasoned but unverified - and honestly labeled as such. An entry's badge describes its main recommendation; individual measured claims are labeled inline where they appear.
Reversible, always
Every entry states its undo. Entries marked restore-point require a System Restore point first: Start > "Create a restore point" > Create. On most Windows 11 machines System Protection is OFF by default and Create is greyed out - first select your Windows drive > Configure > Turn on system protection > set Max Usage to about 5% > OK. Apply one risky change at a time and play a round between changes.
What we deliberately do not recommend
These omissions are decisions, not oversights. If a tweak pack tells you otherwise, it is describing its author's machine - or nobody's.
Coming next
A downloadable read-only PC audit tool and an analyzer page: run one script, paste the result here, get this guide re-ranked for your exact machine. Nothing uploaded, all analysis in your browser.