Five Things PC Owners Can Do While Self-Isolating!

With the current outbreak of the Coronavirus (or COVID-19 if you prefer) many people are being actively encouraged to stay at home whenever possible. That does, of course, draw the question of exactly what you’re going to do…

Well, in a (lighthearted) approach to finding a solution, we’ve put together a list of five things a PC gamer could do to utilize that time in a productive manner. There is, after all, only so much time you can spend on PornHub with a free premium account!

#1 – Clean Your PC!

Personally, every 3-4 months, I like to give my PC a spring clean. Given that one of its main functions is the movement of air, it is important to ensure that your fans are free of the inevitable build-up of dust and other household debris.

Therefore, why not spend a few hours giving your PC the valet treatment by blasting out all of that dust or, if you’re feeling particularly brave, giving your keyboard a thorough detoxification. It might sound crazy and it probably won’t protect you any more or less, but even Samsung is offering to clean your Galaxy for free!

#2 – Build a New System or Upgrade

With more and more businesses looking to restructure themselves while attempting (as best as possible) to avoid a widespread outbreak of the Coronavirus, we think now is probably the best time to upgrade your PC. As was shown just last week, tech companies on the stock market have taken a bit of a pounding and with production lines under question.

Although Andy goes into more detail in the video below, the writing is on the wall. PC component prices are likely to start increasing! As such, given that you’re supposed to be a house hermit anyway, why not put that time to good use by finally building (or upgrading) your PC. Components such as RAM and storage drives are (for the moment) still relatively inexpensive and is a job easily achievable by even the most basic PC owner.

#3 – Catch Up on Your Gaming!

One of the most basic answers is gaming, and with Steam recently reporting a record number of concurrent users, it looks likely to already be one of the ‘go-to’ solutions for many PC owners. So, what can you play? Well, here’s a list of a few games that might feel a little apt (if moderately scary)

• Plague Inc.
• Resident Evil 2
• Silent Hill
• Death Stranding
• The Last of Us

Better still, with the Resident Evil 3 set to arrive in just a couple weeks, there’s more gaming to look forward to if our self-isolation does become a little more extended than we hope! Albeit, we did recently report on a rather disturbing comparison between World of Warcraft and the Coronavirus.

#4 – Let your PC Work at Curing the Virus!

If you’ve ever engaged in cryptocurrency mining, then you’ll undoubtedly be familiar with the concept of letting someone ‘borrow’ the power of your PC. Well, did you know that you can do something similar that may help find a cure for the Coronavirus?

Through the download of a simple application, you can let researchers ‘borrow’ your CPU and GPU power to work on algorithms set up to specifically try and find the cure! All it costs you is a little electricity!

You can learn more about it via the link here!

#5 – Get that Pesky Maintenance Out the Way!

So, you have a nice and shiny looking PC, but how is it actually running? Well, this might be the perfect time to try and get all of that pesky maintenance out of the way. What could you do? Well…

• Clean up your desktop
• Delete all unnecessary junk files
• Organize your folders
• Set up a new restore point
• Update your graphics card drivers!

There’s literally no end to attempting to make your PC run better. So, you might as well get started!

What Do You Think?

So, there you have it, five ways in which (if you do have to become a house-hermit for a couple of weeks) you can occupy your time in a useful and (semi) productive manner.

What do you think though? If you had to self-isolate for a week, what would you do to pass the time? – Let us know in the comments!