With the current heatwaves, humans and machines alike are suffering from record high temperatures, but racers, both on track and on the sim, are still fueled by their passion and desire to drive.
For simracers, ensuring their PCs can keep running reliably is important, especially for endurance races. Unfortunately, ambient temperatures have a direct effect on your components running temperatures, so cooling and optimizing your usage become even more critical than usual, as hot components can lead to thermal throttling, reducing performance, and crashes. Let's see a few steps you can take to mitigate the heat.
The first thing do to is basic maintenance : make sure to clean your PC, especially your fans, your CPU cooler, your graphics card and dust filters. Use dry air (either with cans or an electric duster) to remove the dust on the components and inside the PC, and if some dust or grime keeps sticking on some parts, use anti-static PC cleaning wipes, or just any anti-static cloth with some isopropyl alcohol. The isopropyl will evaporate by itself pretty much instantly and is safe for electronics, so it can also be used on the electronics themselves if need be.
Isopropyl is also good too have if you've had your CPU and GPU installed for a few years : if that's the case, you probably want to replace the thermal paste on both. For the CPU, it is pretty easy : you just have to unmount the cooler to access it. The GPU however will require complete disassembling, which is not recommended if your card is still under warranty. You can however find tutorials on how to do it for most cards, and that generally only requires standard screwdrivers. It is worth looking into it if your card is 4 - 5 years old though as you can gain close to 20°C in idle temperatures with new thermal paste. A tube of good quality thermal paste is not expensive either, we would personally recommend to select a thermal paste that's rated for several years like the Arctic MX6, as the tradeof of a couple degrees is in our opinion worth not having to repaste your chips every year.
If you are running an air cooler on your CPU, it can also be worth switching to liquid cooling, as it will have better performance overall, and also be less affected by ambient temperature. If your budget is limited, Thermalright offers AIO liquid cooling solutions for very competitive prices. While these units may not perform as well as some of the more expensive ones, they will still be a worthy upgrade over air coolers, especially in harsh heat conditions.
If you're still struggling to maintain your PC components cool enough, removing the front and side panels from your computer case can help with airflow. Make sure the placement of your PC also allows it to breathe properly : don't trap it inside furniture, don't put the back of the case too close to a wall, don't put anything on top of the case if you have a liquid cooling radiator or exhaust fans there... and if you're using fans in your room to refresh yourself, try to not have it pointed towards the rear of the case to avoid feeding hot air back to the front of it.
On the user side of things, make sure to disable any program that is not useful. Disable as many startup applications as you can, avoid running a web browser while you race if you can (and if you can't, make sure to have as little tabs open as possible), and try to optimize your overlays and side apps to reduce their numbers if you're still facing issues.
Finally, the easiest solution, both for your electronics and yourself, is to race at night if you can, and enjoy fresh air. In any case, make sure to stay well hydrated, and don't push yourself or your machine too hard !
See you on the race track !🚦🏁
The Race Clutch Center Team