Look, I’m on the record as not being that great at being a PC owner, but there is one thing I thought I knew: you keep your PC tower on top of your desk. This is for a variety of very normal and sensible reasons that I thought we all agreed to, but apparently not.
This question, which I thought firmly settled, was re-opened last night when Luke posted to Bluesky that he’d gotten a new PC (he gets them pre-built, unlike me, an idiot). Aftermath pal and logo designer Andrew Elmore replied to praise Luke for “putting that sumbitch down under the desk where it belongs.”
But does it belong there? I have kept my PC on top of my desk since Kotaku ran an article in 2018 about roaches getting into PS4s. “Warm, in an enclosed space and close to the floor, PS4s are great roach nesting grounds,” the article reads.
What else is warm and close to the floor? My PC tower, which is full of little holes and crannies perfect for roaches to get inside. I live in New York City, in an apartment above a bar; I wouldn’t say I have ever actively had a roach problem, but I definitely see those horrible giant ones from time to time, and I have occasional bursts of little roach activity when the weather changes, alongside the infrequent mouse. One of the worst realizations I had when I started living alone was that any pest in my apartment is always my problem, even if it goes into another room; it doesn't automatically become a roommate's problem once I can't see it anymore, because I own all the rooms. This makes me more anxious about pests than I was when I had roommates to come rescue me from them, so I take extra precautions, like keeping my PC on my desktop. I don’t want to deal with roaches or mice in my PC, and the easiest way to not have to deal with that horrible possibility is to keep it out of their reach.
Plus, the desk is cleaner than the floor! The floor is where all the dust and dirt goes to live, and where it could easily be sucked or swept into my PC tower. When my PC lives on my desk, I don’t have to worry about floor shit getting inside it. I also don’t have to worry about accidentally kicking or sweeping or vacuuming it when I clean, inadvertently damaging its many expensive, precariously-installed parts.
Of course, the desk isn’t the most efficient place for my PC to be. I’ll admit it takes up a lot of space. Especially now that I have a giant microphone and its attendant gadgets, real estate is tight. I keep my tower on the same side as my mouse because it’s closest to an available outlet, so I do occasionally butt up against it when I’m playing games. But it also helps me manage space; I currently keep my ring light and my controller on top of it, and I sometimes put things I don’t want to lose up there too, like the case for my running headphones. Its top can serve as extra desk space, to offset the space it takes up.
Are you heathens keeping your PCs on the floor? Are your houses just cleaner or less pest-prone than mine? Are you better equipped to stave off the sudden burst of anxiety that something might get in there? I thought we were in agreement on this. What the hell, guys?
