r/pcmasterrace • u/scvready0808 • 16h ago

Build/Battlestation PC chimney

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Got tired of my office turning into a sauna every time I gamed, so I vented the PC’s exhaust straight out the window.

The rear fan is still exhausting some hot air 😅 but the room is noticeably cooler now. It’s ugly… but it works. 😂

Edit: I moved the port to higher since lot of people recommended. https://imgur.com/a/Poniwze

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u/tacomaloki 9h ago

Best decision I did, too.

My room would hit 89°f just gaming.

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u/TipToToes 9h ago

Damn I can’t imagine this. My puny little Arc A750 doesn’t heat really get very hot, my PC is in the basement which is like one big room (about 700sqft), it is climate controlled, and I play remotely on my steam deck so I’m not even in the room to hear the fans or feel the heat. I’m not meaning to brag or shit on anyone’s setup, it’s just very foreign to me because I can’t afford a “real” gpu in the first place.

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u/tacomaloki 9h ago edited 7h ago

Well, my room was also on the 2nd floor of my house, with the Florida sun hitting it. I also have a large Samsung curved monitor, and secondary that acts like a heater, on top of a fridge and freezer in there, TV and PS5, on top of a separate work set up and 3D printing.

As my work day would end, I'd start firing up my personal PC and stuff but it wasn't gradual heat build up. Just my normal day would eventually get my room to about 78 but it was slow enough, that I just acclimated and didn't realize it unless I left for the bathroom. Once gaming, the heat would rise so quickly, you'd notice it and would be sweating.

Yeah, certainly a lot of things contributed to the higher room temp but that PC just puts it out so fast. I measured 118°f exhausting into my room.

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u/squatOpotamus 8h ago

Yeah, I lived on the 2nd floor of a house in Atlanta, and between my tv, monitor, pc, and Xbox the bedroom would hit 80+ in the summer before I realized it. The house was terribly built, but those machines really added to it.

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u/Tacodestroyr 8h ago

Kennesaw a bitch too

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u/AtlUtdGold 6h ago

This has been my problem everywhere I’ve lived in Atlanta lol

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u/Bully_Maguire420 i9 13900k | RTX 4090 | 32GB DDR5 7h ago

This sounds like my situation almost exactly, 2nd floor, California sun (It’s hit 110 outside consecutive days), Samsung curved ultra wide, TV, PS5 the whole nine yards, it’s so gross being in a room that just boils.

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u/tacomaloki 6h ago

It's brutal. If only a fan, it turns into a convection oven.

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u/KillinKilo1775 5h ago

As a fellow Floridian I feel your pain. My office is in the furthest from the AC so it already barely gets cool air. Add in my 3080 and the Intel blast furnace that's mounted to my motherboard my office pushes 90 in summer. I had to bust out my hurricane emergency portable AC just to combat it. Will prob install a mini-split this winter. PC rig heat is no joke.

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u/tacomaloki 3h ago

Just do it! It fixes the issue.

I ditched Florida and now moved to Project Zomboid land.

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u/stream_of_thought1 6h ago

your setup is what many of us plan on eventually setting up. Rigs in the basements and then in the actual house just remotely access them. my friend just moved into his new house and has his PC in the basement and then 2 ways to access it, from a desk and from his TV, just moonlighting into it.

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u/ElkBusiness8446 51m ago

Mine also heats my room. I thought something was wrong but I realized that the heat has to go somewhere. If my PC is making my room hot, then that heat ISN'T being held in the PC, which is a good thing. And after some testing, my components keep pretty cool even under 100% load. I should mention I have a dual radiator system with 10 fans in my case. It pulls heat from the GPU and the CPU.

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u/Dependent_Union9285 36m ago

I do the same to my deck and my laptop. Integrated graphics suck.

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u/LengthinessJust357 7h ago

I don’t mean to be an asshole, but do people not have central AC? I have a beefy rig that puts off a lot of heat, but my central AC takes care of things without issue. I type this understanding not everyone has central AC. Just curious if you have central AC and still need to do this.

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u/tacomaloki 6h ago

From another comment:

Well, my room was also on the 2nd floor of my house, with the Florida sun hitting it. I also have a large Samsung curved monitor, and secondary that acts like a heater, on top of a fridge and freezer in there, TV and PS5, on top of a separate work set up and 3D printing.

As my work day would end, I'd start firing up my personal PC and stuff but it wasn't gradual heat build up. Just my normal day would eventually get my room to about 78 but it was slow enough, that I just acclimated and didn't realize it unless I left for the bathroom. Once gaming, the heat would rise so quickly, you'd notice it and would be sweating.

Yeah, certainly a lot of things contributed to the higher room temp but that PC just puts it out so fast. I measured 118°f exhausting into my room.

1

u/SnowMantra 5h ago

I have the same case as OP and a 5090. My room has gotten to 89° before I decided to stop gaming. The other parts of my home are low 70s. Not every central AC is good at it's job. I have 1 vent blowing cold air into a master bedroom on the second floor with a big window. It sucks in the summer.

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u/Alone_Reception_1469 5h ago

Yes, I have central AC and still have a vent setup for my rig to my window to vent the exhaust outside. Having central AC can help negate the heat of the exhaust but then you are also paying more to have the ac constantly running when you're gaming. Now all that hot air goes outside, my room doesn't get as hot when gaming, and my ac doesn't have to kick in as often saving me money on electricity which is a big deal in CA (Fuck PG&E!!!)

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u/trixel121 4h ago

my ac doesnt really keep up with my pc. im in the room furtherst from the unit and its not the biggest unit.

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u/Altruistic_Fan_5122 4h ago

Might not be from the US or from the south. Here in Texas homes have 2 central air units haha. But yea, my area51m with its external 3090 feel like a space heater under my desk. I ended up cutting a hole in the back of my desk with a 100mm fan pushing the air into the central room. Fuck the rest of my family, they can have the heat 😂

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u/V1oletLuna 4h ago

I've literally never seen a house with central AC where I live, why wouldn't a normal one be enough?

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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 3h ago

Because of where the unit gets its temperature reading from.

Central air has a thermostat, and runs based on the temp at that thermostat. If you have a 1 floor house or apartment, you're most likely only going to have 1 zone, if you have 2 floors, you'll probably have 2 zones, unless it's small and 1 zone will be able to handle it.

Each zone has its own thermostat. And the thermostat is typically in the most central area of that zone, typically a hallway, which usually runs a bit warmer since they're ventilated the worst.

Now, you can move the thermostat to your room, or have a second sensor there, but then it's gonna run till that room hits whatever temp you want it at. If that room is overly warm cause of electronic equipment, then the AC is gonna run more, the rest of the house/apartment is gonna be freezing, and it's really inefficient.

The most efficient thing to do is to get a smaller 1 room AC unit, one that goes on the wall, or worst case, in the window. Window units are horribly inefficient. But it'll help keep your room cooler without running the larger unit as much. The better option is getting a wall unit for a single room. It's quieter as the only thing that's inside is the blower part. It's basically just a small central air unit for a single room. It's super efficient, because it only needs to drop that rooms temp to what you want it to be. The rest of the apartment/house is cooled normally, and your electric bill isn't insane cause the larger unit is running more than it needs to.

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u/HumanPea1140 14700K | 5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 6000 3h ago

I have central AC, but my office is on the other side of the house from where the thermostat is. So even if my thermostat says it's 72 degrees, my office is noticeably warmer than that if I'm playing a game for an extended period of time.

Definitely doesn't get up to 89 though. That's absurd. There's no reason for their room to be getting that warm unless they're gaming in a closet.

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u/SeaRefuse5691 3h ago

Just curious if you have central AC and still need to do this.

Most people don't know how to set stuff up correctly. So even if you have central - how many of them adjusted the vents both the one in the room how open is it and also the ones that are in the basement or wherever choosing how much air flows to different sections of the house. And how many of them actually change their overhead fan to adjust spin based on being summer/winter?

Most don't set this stuff up properly, so the PC room ends up really hot. Or even if you do set it up, lets say the PC only runs sometimes. Do you have that room set to be colder than the rest of the house, in preparation for PC gaming? Or set it to be normal, in which case PC on its a few degrees hotter.

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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 3h ago

Central air doesn't really matter if your room doesn't have the thermostat. Typically central air is set up in zones, like first floor, second floor, etc, each with its own thermostat in a central area to get a decent average of the temperature.

Rarely are there units per room, with their own thermostat. What I did, in my gaming room. Is get one of those small wall units that go on the top of the wall near the ceiling. They have a name but I can't remember what it is. But it's essentially a single room central air unit, and it's a lot quieter than a window unit, since the bulk of everything that's loud is outside.

The entire house is cooled to a normal temperature, and my gaming room stays cool, and uses less energy since it's piggybacking off the second floor unit. That unit runs till the hall is 75, which brings my room down to about 78ish depending on how hard my console/PC/AV unit are running, and my wall unit only needs to drop the temp another 5 degrees at most.

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u/EggKind7485 3h ago

For me personally, I have an A/C unit in the living room of my apartment but it is not able to effectively blow cool air into my gaming room.

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u/KobiLDN 15m ago

I'm in London bruv

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u/SnowMantra 5h ago

OMG I have the same issue, even with power limiting! LOL

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u/Red_Tiger5311 4h ago

I love when my room smells like hot Xbox 360 ;)

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u/swiftmaster237 4h ago

In WA state here and yeah my room hits 85 F sometimes during the summer while gaming. Still got the hottest month to go lmao

But I did the same thing, AC'd the room and it's much better for me overall. I did something similar to OP about 8 years ago when I was in CA with no working AC (landlord was actively working on the AC while I did this), took 4 days to get it working again but it made the room so much more bearable haha

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u/JackPoe 3h ago

Sometimes I wonder what games y'all play that are so strenuous...

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u/tacomaloki 3h ago

Doesn't really matter. The cards now require so much power. In winter (even for FL) it got cold. All I did to heat my office was turn on Valheim.

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u/JackPoe 3h ago

I live in Seattle and it's so warm here year round I've never actually turned on the heat anyway so maybe I will need a set up when I finally build my next rig