Cold weather, natures free PC performance boost
- Elemental Systems
- Sep 14, 2024
- 3 min read
Anyone who puts heavy load on a PC such as a gaming session or running benchmark software like that of 3D Mark or perhaps rendering and video editing or alike will know that sometimes the room you are in can start to feel a little, toasty... Unless you have that life saving AC unit of course. But heat, an uncomfortable sweat inducing heat if you are in a small room lacking ventilation or throwing yourself around on that sweet sim (simulation) racing rig you bought and force feedback getting you pumped.
There is a term you will see thrown around "ambient temperature" within the PC world and especially from the likes of those who are enthusiasts, chasing leaderboard scores through the means of overclocking. Pushing the hardware beyond factory settings by adjusting voltages and clock speeds, memory timings, power limits, cooling solutions like custom water-loops and even the likes of liquid nitrogen (LN2) and more to really push the boundaries and break records, also referred to as sub-zero cooling.
So what is ambient temperature and why does it matter... Ambient temperature is the temperature of the air wherever you are and the reason it matters is PC cooling and the free performance it can unlock, PC's without using the likes of custom water-cooling and the sub-zero cooling just mentioned cannot be cooled below the ambient temperature. This means if you have a cooler room (ambient temp) then the minimum temperature of the PC components will generally mirror this as a result, also why you might see different temperatures day to day even if it is only 1°C.
By now I assume you are wondering about this free performance considering the title of this piece so let's dive into it... Lets take the CPU for ease of explanation, the speed of a processor or 'CPU' (Central Processing Unit) is typically measured in GHz (Gigahertz) labelled as CPU speed or clock speed which determines how fast the processor can complete cycles with a cycle being 1Hz or Hertz per second. The main performance limitation per CPU aside from power draw is heat with many contributing factors but too much heat (individually determined by different manufacturers, parts and generations of) can induce another commonly used term 'thermal throttle' meaning the part in question will drop performance in order to prevent any damage to components and ultimately lowering the temperature.
The above mentioned is why the colder the air forced into the PC as a general rule grants the possibility to manually increase performance with the likes of overclocking or you could even be naturally gaining it without even knowing it from the 'boost behaviour' of modern CPU's, for example the AMD Ryzen 7600x on the AM5 line up has a thermal limit of 95°C by default and a TDP of 105W (Watts), base clock speed of 4.7GHz and the ability to boost up to 5.3GHz, but this can be higher, it's all about taming the heat. PBO is a great way to gain some extra performance for very little work by utilising curve optimiser but currently as it always has been, manual overclocking will be the strongest performer or at the least for now.
Put a jumper on, turn on the AC and open the windows for that cold weather PC performance boost!
Written by Rossi @ Elemental Systems
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