There are several reasons that your gaming PC’s temperature gets a little hot.
Heat in a PC is mainly caused by a CPU’s processing power. If your PC is running a ton of things at once or is heavily at work, it will tend to overheat.
Additions like fans and thermal paste will try to maintain the CPU’s longevity and keeps all your other components safe as well, but this article will show you alternative methods to keep your PC cool when gaming.
Gaming PC Fans
The basics of gaming PC fans are simple: You need a fan to intake cool air while another one removes the heated air.
Knowing this, it is a great idea to keep these two in opposite placements with each other on your gaming PC. The recommended placement is that the gaming fan should be near the drive bay that will intake the cool air.
The other exhaust fan should be near the back of the PC case where it is closer to your CPU. The heat is always on the CPU and is also near the other hardware. This removes it quickly and the intake fan replaces that air as soon as possible. You can learn more about this in our gaming fan article.
This trick should improve the overall airflow of your PC with greatly placed fans inside your case. The more space you have inside your PC case, the better because it will allow more air passage for the gaming fans to work. Though it is not that important, it will also be helpful nonetheless.
Increasing Fan Speeds
When you start playing games or maybe even doing some heavy processing such as video editing, you will need to crank up those fan speeds if they are only working at an average rate. This is because the CPU is doing some heavy work and will heat up more than usual.
There are some free softwares you can check out depending on your brand and there are also some third-party softwares out there you can find. Basically, this will notify you if your CPU is starting to heat up.
You can easily increase your fan speeds. Some gaming cases have built-in buttons that you can manually press to increase and decrease fan speeds. The most common ones are softwares and it is much more manageable as you can see what is happening to your CPU or gaming PC with that.
Another way is to get yourself a fan controller. These fan controllers are relatively cheap as well and it has great indicators that can help you automate the speed of your fans.
Avoid Overclocking
Overclocking is a feature that improves your PC’s performance but it comes at a cost. It drastically increases your temperature so this feature is to be only used for people who already know what they are doing because this might be dangerous.
Overheating is a serious issue that can lead to numerous problems such as your PC randomly shutting down. This can damage your other components and should only be used with caution.
With the software mentioned above, you can test out overclocking speeds and adjust accordingly with your fan speeds. If it still cannot handle it, you can either get another fan or reduce overclocking little by little until you reach your desired temperature.
50 degrees Celcius is a healthy temperature and going around 70 degrees Celcius should also be normal but it is already considered warm. Playing games or processing should already put you around 70 degrees Celcius and it is a nice idea to let it cool off from time to time.
Consistently Update Your Drivers
This might not be something you might expect, but updates on your drivers are very important. This is because they continually try to optimize the way your gaming PC process things. This is more true on games as you consistently find new updates for your drivers when new games come out.
If you are looking to play a new game that has just come out, try to check for updates because there will likely be one. This will help your PC run the game at a more optimal level and in short, reduces your PC’s temperature.
If this does not help you lower your temperature enough while playing, you can manually adjust the settings of your game to keep it cooler. Lowering renders, graphic settings, removing shadows, and lowering anti-aliasing will all help reduce your CPU’s temperature and even make the game run smoother.
Replacing Thermal Paste
This is the main way of reducing the temperature on your CPU. If you are using a good brand of thermal paste, this should not be an issue as it should last you upwards of 6 years. There are cases where there is not enough thermal paste applied and it lasts a little shorter but anyone who builds gaming PCs should know this.
Conclusion
While there are more ways to try and cool your PC systems, these are the best and most inexpensive ways to do it. The liquid cooling system is one of the best ways to cool your gaming PC but it was not touched on that much here. The problem with them is that if they leak, it can cause some serious damage to your hardware.
The main benefit you get from it is that it cools your CPU faster, and your PC runs more quietly without the fans running all the time. They are much more expensive too and it takes a lot to build up as it takes more space.
