How To Keep Your PC Cool While Gaming

An overheating PC isn't just annoying, but it can also shorten your PC's lifespan. If you're tired of lag and overheating, this post will show you how to fix it. These are my top tips for keeping your gaming PC cool.

Check out our complete PC Troubleshooting playlist on YouTube.

1. Checking on Your Temperatures in Real Time

Using hardware info, you can see if your CPU is getting too hot or if your GPU is also getting too hot.

Identify specifically how hot it's getting and how you might need to improve it.

2. Optimizing Your PC Placement for Cooling

A lot of people want to keep their gaming desktops on the ground as that's the best place for them in their room, but that's not always the best place for your PC to improve the cooling.

Desktop Placement

Keeping it on the ground can sometimes clog up the fans or introduce more dust to the computer than necessary.

Picking a place for your PC that's elevated is a lot better. Putting it on your desk or even on a small table can help improve the cooling performance drastically.

Laptop Placement

If you're using a gaming laptop, you can elevate the back of the PC to add in more air flow.

Alternatively, use a cooling pad to directly funnel air to the bottom of the PC to improve the intake.

3. Improving Your Case's Air Flow

This usually means having a balanced intake to exhaust pattern in your PC, which means having an equal number of intake fans and exhaust fans in your computer.

If you're using a water cooling radiator, this can inhibit the intake or exhaust depending on where it's placed, so you should add extra fans to compensate for this reduction in air flow to help balance out your computer.

4. Reapplying Thermal Paste

Sometimes your CPU just simply cannot be overcome by faster fans.

CPU Thermal Paste

You need to take off the CPU heat sink and clean off the old thermal paste to add new thermal paste in order to help improve the overall cooling performance.

GPU Thermal Paste

The same can be done on your GPU, but this usually requires a lot more steps and can be a bit more dangerous as you're taking apart the GPU itself.

If you're unsure of how to do this, you can look up some guides online or here on the channel or go to your local computer repair place to have them help you reapply the thermal paste.

5. Adjust Fan Speeds and Power Settings

If you want to brute force more cooling performance, you can always set your fans to go max speed at all times. And this will help improve the cooling performance all the time, though this can be kind of loud.

You can also optimize the curve to specifically match the cooling performance your PC needs.

To reduce the power consumption of your PC, you can reduce your in-game graphics settings or set power limiters in programs such as MSI Afterburner or in the BIOS to help improve the efficiency of your computer.

6. Keeping Your PC Clean and Dust-Free

Probably the most important tip is keeping your PC clean and dust-free. Now, dust is the enemy of all cooling systems as dust will inhibit the air flow and therefore reduce the cooling of your gaming PC. So, keeping your PC nice and clean and free of dust is very important.

Cleaning Tips

In more humid climates, dust can be sticky and much more inhibiting. So, you should be much more careful if you live in humid or hot climates.

When cleaning your dust filters, you can easily remove them from your computer so that you can dust it off with a vacuum or an air duster.

If you're cleaning off the fans specifically, make sure to hold them in place so they don't spin and send back currents into your motherboard and accidentally fry something on your computer.

7. Upgrading Your Cooling System

Sometimes there's no way around it. You just need to add more fans to your computer or change out the cooler you have.

CPU Upgrades

If you're running a stock cooler on your CPU, you can upgrade to a larger cooler such as an NH-D15 or a water cooler such as a Corsair H150i. These will drastically improve the cooling performance on your CPU.

GPU Upgrades

On your graphics card, you'll know it's time to upgrade when you tried everything on this list and nothing seems to help. 

Your temperatures are constantly rising and there's no way to really get them under control. Adding more fans or changing a cooler can be the only option at that point.

Don't let thermal throttling ruin your gaming experience. At Apex Gaming PCs, we build custom rigs with premium cooling solutions right out of the box. Check out our systems today and stay cool under pressure.

Written By Danl K
Edited by William Wilson

Header Photo Pavan Bhakta

Updated: 7/11/24