In recent years, due to climate change, gaming has become increasingly difficult to enjoy during the summer because of rising heat waves. Why, according to the BBC, June 2026 has seen a record-breaking heat dome across the United Kingdom and Europe, with temperatures reaching between 36°C and 41°C (95°F to 105.8°F).
And that goes without mentioning that most homes in the UK and Europe were built to retain heat in winter, making them even more unbearable to sit through in summer (most of them aren't built with air conditioning).
I know this because I live in a brick-built house in the UK, which gets so hot during summer heat waves that it feels like my bedroom turns into an oven, especially when I have to turn on my PC for work.
pcmasterrace from r/pcmasterrace/comments/1v6vo1r/pc_chimney
My colleagues and I, living across the world, turn to playing games on handhelds like the Xbox Ally or anything that supports Xbox Cloud Gaming during heat waves to play without making the temperature in our homes even worse via the combined excess heat from our consoles or PCs.
However, Reddit user "scvready0808" got sick and tired of these heat waves turning his office into a sauna whenever he wanted to play PC games, so he decided to craft a homemade "PC chimney".
Using a combination of Etsy-sourced duct adapters, insulated flexible piping, connector kits, and a window fan, they're venting excess heat from their PC and making the room's temperature more tolerable for gaming.
It's a primitive-looking but effective method that worked in scvready0808's favor, and it's one I'd love to try myself, since my room is incompatible with traditional air conditioners — though I'd need to learn how to craft the thing without breaking my windows in the process.
Either way, I hate summer, and I can't wait for winter to come again so I can game in peace without worrying about overheating my precious RTX GPU or my ever-expensive Xbox Series X.
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