Discord's new Party Mode may take a slice of your CPU

(Image credit: Discord)

Discord is the current go-to chat app for many PC gamers, and plenty of other online hobbyists. For the uninitiated, Discord allows people to form individual servers with forum-like categories for text based chat, and includes voice chat functionality for group calls during games.

People make Discord servers for all sorts of things, whether or not they really should. Ideally the app runs in the background, not taking up too many resources so your gaming can take hardware priority. Although, this isn't always the case.

To celebrate the app's seventh anniversary, Discord has released a new Party Mode functionality. This is just a bit of fun that adds visual and audio elements to the usual experience. Confetti and a combo counter appears when you type, along with screen shake and even a cheering crowd. It's a silly cute little celebration, but boy can it eat your CPU.

Thankfully Party Mode is off by default, but some users who have enabled it to take part in the celebrations are finding the party to be a bit of a processor hog. It tends to vary person to person, but some have reported having their CPU spike by 30% just from turning on the new mode. That's really the opposite of what you want this chat app to be doing.

Your next upgrade

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

Personally, enabling Discord's Party Mode didn't cause any initial change to my CPU. However, when typing while the graphics appear it can jump up by about 20% or so and stays up there while I type. My GPU also sees a quick burst when typing commences but then immediately calms back down. Seems at least it knows how to leave a party early.

Turning Party Mode off again is just as easy as turning it on, and you can also play with the individual settings if you want to keep some aspects of the party going. Ultimately, this is just a bit of fun so it's hardly a big deal, but if you are experiencing some unexpected peaks from your CPU or GPU, then this might just explain it.

If you're looking to jazz up your Discord server with some other bells and whistles that hopefully won't bottleneck your hardware, check out some of our favourite themes and plugins. But be aware, some of your favourites may not end up being around forever.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

No, she’s not kidding.