Choosing the ideal placement for better cooling or maintaining good cleaning will extend the life of your hardware.
If you live in Spain, you will take a few days suffering this heavy heat wave that makes it hard for us to sleep at night and keeps us sweating all day. Unfortunately, you are not the only one who is experiencing the consequences of high temperatures, your video game consoles too. At 3DJuegos PC we have already told you about the effect that this heat can have on your PC, but what about consoles?
The truth is that we are more aware of the importance of maintaining good refrigeration in our PC, in part because many of us build our own equipment and we do it by striving for good airflow to keep our components cool. But on many occasions, video game consoles are treated more as a video player than as a demanding hardware that requires good ventilationfitted in any way, without taking into account anything other than the space they occupy and whether they can fit into the cabinet.
This can lead to fatal consequences in the short and long term for the hardware, especially if we talk about long gaming sessions at high temperatures. For this reason, because we think about the well-being of your consoles so that they continue to give you great joy, we wanted to bring you some tips very simple that it never hurts to remember to extend the life of your console, even when we have high temperatures.
- Don’t box your console: It may be the most obvious, but it is also one of the most important. You have a complete report on what is the best way to place your console in the living room without affecting cooling. Although it is dedicated to the new generation of PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, you can also take note of some ideas for any other console. The idea is that you don’t keep your console locked in a cubicle where it can’t renew the air. The cooling needs to introduce cold air from the environment and expel hot air, if you put your hand in the compartment where your console is located and the sensation is that all the air around it is very warm, something is not working well.
- Choose well the place where to place your console: Most of us don’t consider cooling when choosing the best spot for your console, but really, we should. Chances are your home has drafts that will be generated when you open a couple of windows. These drafts don’t affect the whole house or every room the same, so if you have a choice, your home’s natural airflow path is the ideal place to not have to worry too much about cooling your console. In case the air does not circulate too much, think about the height where you have it located and try to take it as close to the ground as possible, it is where the coldest air in the house is and the weight of the hot air that your console emits will generate beneficial airflow.
- avoid sunlight: If you are lucky enough to live in a very bright house, you will probably take advantage of every hour of daylight with all the windows open. This is great, but not so great for your console. Even if you feel like the heat in the room isn’t high enough to worry you, your console may be experiencing it differently if it’s experiencing the direct hit of sunlight while you play, so keep an eye on the path of sunlight and make sure that at no time the console is exposed to the sun.
- If all else fails, choose the coolest room in the house to play: At this point, you may have found that you have problems in all of the above aspects. If this is the case and you want to spend the heat wave playing anyway, the best advice we can give you is to take the essential elements to play in the coolest part of the house and consider how to solve your setup with more time. ‘.
- Shorten your gaming sessions with regular breaks– Actually, you should always take regular breaks in your gaming sessions for health reasons, but if you’re in the middle of a heat wave and don’t have the best means of keeping your console cool, the least you can do for it is not to crush it with sessions of several hours without rest. Your console will thank you and your eyes too.
- Cleanliness is essential: Even if you put all the above tips into practice, they will be useless if you do not maintain the console well, paying special attention to the ventilation channels. In 3DJuegos you can find a whole series of recommendations to keep the PS5, the Xbox Series X | S and also the Nintendo Switch clean. These are general tips for a complete cleaning of the device and its peripherals that can come in handy, but since what matters to us today is keeping the temperature at bay, the vents are going to be your main objective. Make sure there is no visible dirt build up and if there is, remove it with a brush. We do not recommend the compressed air spray, unless you are very clear about how to use it: in specific places and diagonally, to remove the dirt and not get it inside the hardware. If any lint is stuck in the grids, you can help yourself with a fine and sharp object to remove it. Cleaning the furniture in which it is deposited is also essential to prevent dirt from ending up on the grids.
Now that we have reviewed some ways not to fry your console, all that remains is to choose the games you plan to play and what better way to beat the heat than with 6 very cool video games where snow and cold are the protagonists. They will not reduce the temperature of your house, but at least they will help you to feel that you travel to less hot climates.
More about: Heat wave, Consoles, Refrigeration and Temperature.
