Room temperature for physical video games collection?

[UlvenFenrir]

Ive googled this and i see mixed opinions. Some say below 80F or 22-23C is the best for optimal room temp for physical games but isnt that hard to maintain during hot summers? Even with windows open, the room can still get hot. 
 

Ive found that humidity is the most important one to be aware of but i dont really think thats an issue where i live honestly.

 

So how hot can a room be without causing any long term damage to your video game collection? Or am i overthinking this one and are we talking extreme cases before anything negative happens? 
 

Just curious about those who live in the united states, where it can get really hot, have you ever had any issues?

 

Im not gonna go out of my way to get a dehumidifier or a room temp control thing. I dont see why that would be necessary unless you live in parts of the world where you constant deal with humidity problems.

 

Appreciate any thoughts on this.  

[HuntingFever]

You would need sustained almost nuclear level heat over a long period of time, before your games start suffering . To be honest, I would be more worried about the console itself then the games, because intense summer heat + CPU heat = a really bad time. It gets really hot in the UK during certain Summers but I've never had any issues with my games malfunctioning because of it, even during the legendarily ultra hot summer in the Mid 1990's when temperatures went through the roof all over the country.

Edited June 19, 2022 by HuntingFever
Update.

[El Duderino]

8 minutes ago, UlvenFenrir said:

Even with windows open, the room can still get hot. 

The usual mistake people make is to think that opening a window will cool a room down. Nope, quite the opposite. If it's hot outside, the air will heat up the room way more than direct sunlight. Keeping the windows shut is the best way to keep the heat outside. Air condition helps if available. But the most important thing for game preservation is to them dry. Humidity is fatal for optical discs - at least in the long term. But then again, I do own music CDs bought 32 years ago and they still work perfectly fine. No reason to worry here.

 

3 minutes ago, HuntingFever said:

It gets really hot in the UK during the Summer but I've never had any issues with my games malfunctioning because of it, even during the legendarily ultra hot summer in the Mid 1990's when temperatures went through the roof all over the country.

Believe it or not, but there are places on this planet that are slightly warmer than your precious and mostly rainy island. Go ask the people in India right now who have been facing a sever heat wave with temperatures close to 50° C / 121° F.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_heat_wave_in_India_and_Pakistan

 

Not to mention places like Baghdad with temperatures frequently over 50° C.

[Frontzie]

With the majority of my collection (1100+ games, 70+ consoles, 500-ish comics) being located in the (well-ventilated) attic of my house in the UK, it does get hot. 25°C with no air-con.

 

I regularly play my games, not noticed any issues between cart, tape or disc due to the heat. Humidity is overall constant.

[El Duderino]

Oh, by the way, do you people really believe that your room temperature can come even close to that your console creates inside while playing?

 

6 minutes ago, frontzie said:

it does get hot. 25°C with no air-con.

That's anything but "hot".

Edited June 19, 2022 by R4M Razr

[UlvenFenrir]

29 minutes ago, R4M Razr said:

The usual mistake people make is to think that opening a window will cool a room down. Nope, quite the opposite. If it's hot outside, the air will heat up the room way more than direct sunlight. Keeping the windows shut is the best way to keep the heat outside. Air condition helps if available. But the most important thing for game preservation is to them dry. Humidity is fatal for optical discs - at least in the long term. But then again, I do own music CDs bought 32 years ago and they still work perfectly fine. No reason to worry here.

I mean we open most windows in the house to get fresh air circulating, making the room cool. I know just opening the window by itself isnt enough. 
 

By dry, you mean normal room temp? And when we are talking humidity that is fatal for discs, are we talking sauna level of humidity?

31 minutes ago, frontzie said:

With the majority of my collection (1100+ games, 70+ consoles, 500-ish comics) being located in the (well-ventilated) attic of my house in the UK, it does get hot. 25°C with no air-con.

 

I regularly play my games, not noticed any issues between cart, tape or disc due to the heat. Humidity is overall constant.

 

43 minutes ago, HuntingFever said:

You would need sustained almost nuclear level heat over a long period of time, before your games start suffering . To be honest, I would be more worried about the console itself then the games, because intense summer heat + CPU heat = a really bad time. It gets really hot in the UK during the Summer but I've never had any issues with my games malfunctioning because of it, even during the legendarily ultra hot summer in the Mid 1990's when temperatures went through the roof all over the country.

 Thanks for the answers.  So in short, nothing to worry about then. It would have to be extreme cases before anything would happen.

[majob]

The only thing you should really worry about is leaving games in direct sunlight, otherwise Blu Rays have a protective layer that helps preserve them and if you keep games in storage, even better. I use plastic containers and then store them in a cabinet.

[El Duderino]

5 minutes ago, UlvenFenrir said:

I mean we open most windows in the house to get fresh air circulating, making the room cool. I know just opening the window by itself isnt enough. 
 

By dry, you mean normal room temp? And when we are talking humidity that is fatal for discs, are we talking sauna level of humidity?

You can only cool down the room temperature by opening the windows if it's actually cooler outside than inside the house.
As for humidity, I'm talking about rooms like the bathroom or maybe a basement that lacks proper insulation. Normal rooms are perfecly fine. If you happen to live in the Amazon rainforst, well, I cannot comment on this.

Edited June 19, 2022 by R4M Razr

[melodicmizery]

i wouldnt worry about it to much. game disc labels last alot longer then things like burnable cdr's. my mom recently gave me a bag of cdr's i left in her car from 15 years ago. exposed to alot of sun and other bs, the cd's fade on the cover and peel. but games they have thicker labels just like mainstream cd's do as well.

as for  humidity ive lived in the city and country areas. i still have ps1 games and none have been impacted. but humidity can make paper wavy. ive lugged around comic books the past 30 years and when i had a apartment i left them in a closet that had odd humidity and when i looked at them like 8 yrs later when i moved i noticed alot of comics the paper was a bit wavy. i dont know if jewel cases protect more against humidity compared to plastic bags and cardboard for comics.

ive always had a toy room for toy collectables and ive always pinned the curtains closed in those rooms and let no sunlight in. but as long as the sunlight isnt beaming on it it should be ok. with toys alot of companies like todd mcfarlane use very cheap plastic and sunlight will turn the plastic yellow. also those huge big bulbs can yellow plastic. and even shelf lights sometimes. but again jewel case plastic is tougher. and then when  you get into ps3 ps4 games their not even jewel cases like ps1 was.

also these games are pretty much worthless now with digital. the price drop of a physical copy drops down pretty fast compared to the past. alot of ps3 games the online dont work and you cant even finish. they are kind of only worth the value of historic reasons and personal feelings.

i do try to keep my room anywhere from 62-73 degrees. central air. 62 in the winter because i like to sleep in the cold which usually goes to 68 or so because heat rises and my main bdr and toy room is upstairs. 

i still have the 2 very first cds i bought when i got my very first cd player. da brat and nwa lmao. and those cds and cases are still in good condition. and ive stored those anywhere the past circa 30 years

[El Duderino]

4 minutes ago, melodicmizery said:

i do try to keep my room anywhere from 62-73 degrees.

How much is that in real currency? You've written so much text but didn't think about the vast majority of people who do not use Fahrenheit? In fact, only the US use this obsolete stuff.

62-73 Fahrenheit are 16-23 Celsius.

[dannyswfc9]

1 hour ago, HuntingFever said:

It gets really hot in the UK during the Summer

No it doesn't ?. It got to 30c for 1 day the other day and the entire country shit their pants.  Its nothing compared to 40+ degreese that some of our trans atlantic friends have to suffer through

Edited June 19, 2022 by dannyswfc9

[melodicmizery]

2 minutes ago, R4M Razr said:

How much is that in real currency? You've written so much text but didn't think about the vast majority of people who do not use Fahrenheit? In fact, only the US use this obsolete stuff.

62-73 Fahrenheit are 16-23 Celsius.

our temperature might be stupid i agree. and our government. but we pretty much kick ass in everything else so that makes up for it lol. and googling it only took you a second. anyways i agree with your original post of what you said.i prob could of saved us all time by hearitng it and not even typing my last post or this one. but another thing americans are great at, is wasting other peoples time as well as our own

[Gueeds]

I’ve always wondered this myself. I try to keep them cool and the humidity low, under 55% or so. 
 

Probably goes without saying, keep them out of direct sunlight. I’ve seen so many games get discoloration for baking in the sun for months because sun is shining on them.

[Raidou Kuzunoha XIV]

1 hour ago, R4M Razr said:

Oh, by the way, do you people really believe that your room temperature can come even close to that your console creates inside while playing?

 

Pretty much this. I've regularly taken discs out of my consoles after several hours of playing before and they're usually pretty warm. And it's not unusual for me to be playing for 5-8+ hours straight on days off, and 2-4 hours on work days. It's yet to have done any damage to any of my discs and I've been doing this for most of my life at this point. Same goes for game cartridges, the Switch especially warms 'em up nicely. If my PCs' CPU temps tend to average around 40-50c when not doing much of anything aside from browsing the internet, I can only imagine how hot my consoles must get internally.

 

Unless you're leaving your discs in direct sunlight or cooking them, I highly doubt the general temperature in your room is going to do anything to them.

 

I'd be more worried about humidity, as I did have some Wii games slightly damaged by humidity when I stupidly stored them in an attic for a prolonged at my last place. They still work fine, but had what look like some specks of mold(?) on the discs and manuals which mostly wiped away. Worst of all was a lot of the paper inlays became kinda wavy or wrinkled. I'd say it's probably best storing your games at 50% or lower humidity, wouldn't recommend having the humidity any higher than that for prolonged periods.

[Breakingthegreen]

1 hour ago, R4M Razr said:

 

Quote

it does get hot. 25°C with no air-con.

That's anything but "hot".

Have I got a video for you!

 

A TL;DW

It should be noted that relative temperature in countries determines what is and isn't objective, 25 C for 5 days in a row in the UK is enough to trigger a heat wave warning.

UK architecture is designed to keep heat in buildings, double glazing, no basements, and no air conditioning. Conversely hotter climates housing can struggle in wither, those houses are designed to keep heat out, it's a major contributing factor to deaths (of housed people) in the 2021 storm in Texas. 

 

 

[mega-tallica]

You're way overthinking this. Temperature really has no effect on physical games whatsoever. Unless you're living in a microwave, I wouldn't worry about temperature at all. If the cases are in direct sunlight all the time, you'll get fading of colors on the cover art but that's about it. 

 

Humidity... unless you have really high humidity all the time like you're in a tropical climate or you leave your games in a basement or attic with poor ventilation for long periods of time (I'm talking many months/years) then you might start seeing the cover art get crinkled and wavy-looking as it begins to be affected by the excess moisture in the air. 

 

The discs themselves are pretty much indestructible if left alone in their cases. There's a thing called disc rot where if the disc is subject to high temperature and high humidity for long periods of time and the disc is used a lot that it'll take years off its life which is true. But by the time that happens you'll be long dead and your game collection wouldn't be much of a care to you anymore at that point anyway. 

 

Long story short, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. 

 

 

 

[megacoolermensch]

temperature should not be a problem. just store your games in shadows so no direct sunlight can hit them and you can play them for many decades.

[Zircon_Lotus]

Where I live during summer the temperature very often goes to and beyond 40 celsius, but this never damaged any of my discs. The sole reason for my disc problems was dust. 

 

On the other hand like others said the consoles suffer. None so far stopped working, but the fan will work like crazy and I experience longer loading times, and the ocasional frame drop. 

[Viper]

Not something I've ever thought much about. I come from a family of big people, I'm a big guy myself...so AC is a VERY important thing in this house. I don't like the heat, I don't like Summer time at all...opening the windows in 80F+ degree weather is NOT a viable option, that does nothing but bring in 80 degree fresh air. It's essential that it's always cool in this house year round. So I'm rarely in a situation where I feel like it's so hot that my game collection is suffering. 

 

But even then it'd have to be an extreme case. While I understand there's warning labels about making sure to keep your games in a certain temp range...they'd have to be in these extreme situations for long periods of time to do any real damage. 

[charxsetsuna]

Can't say I've ever considered this, disc cases I've always found to be very durable.

[UlvenFenrir]

Wow that was a bunch of replies to my question. I didnt expect that. Thanks a bunch my dudes.  that puts my mind at ease. Just wanted to make sure how important it was with heat and humidity and seems like its just a case by case situation.