COOL RUNNINGS

The annual quest for optimal PC performance in stuffy summer heat

- Phil Iwaniuk

Summertime's a conflicting proposition for the individual whose passions generally take place in an RGB-lit chamber where the soft whirr of case exhaust fans is a constant. On one hand, all that vitamin D's going spare outside. You could be soaking it up for free and decalcifying your winter brain, daring to imagine a life beyond pressing the boost button on the central heating and letting the next episode of Succession autoplay while you warm your hands on a mug of Twinings English Breakfast.

On the other: the screen glare. The suffocating heat of sitting near a box full of red-hot componentry. The guilt of pulling the curtains and ignoring nature just beyond them so that you can better pick out the D.Vas and Genjis on your monitor. And above all: the system temps. Warm ambient temperatures don't make for great framerates or system stability. That's been true for as long as this writer's been PC gaming, and until recently mine was a strategy of quiet resignation, simply leaving the most GPU-intensive titles for a cooler day. But not this summer. No, this time I vowed to do whatever I could to keep my PC's temperatures low during the summer months.

THE BIG CHILL