Show Us Your Rig: Soloweb Studios' Ivano Cheers

Show us your rig

Each week on Show Us Your Rig, we feature PC gaming's best and brightest as they show us the systems they use to work and play.

Ivano Cheers is the owner and Co-founder of Soloweb Studios, currently working of Aero's Quest, and has to deal with a rather unique challenge. Soloweb is based on the Caribbean island of Curacao, where the temperature is hot year round. Extra fans and cooling aren't just for overclockers, they're essential. Cheers was kind enough to show us what he uses to develop games and tell us why he still loves old arcade games over big-name titles.

What’s in your PC?

First of all I must say that we use old and powerless computers for coding and test purposes in order to check if what we do can run on slower computers and, I must admit, I’m definitely a Mac user, yet I need to have a PC for coding games. Here is the basic set-up I use:

Laptop Acer Aspire V17
Intel Core i7 4720HQ (2.60GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 4 GB GDDR5
16GB Memory 1TB HDD 256GB SSD
BENQ Monitor that works also as a TV
Basic Acer Mouse
Extra rack of 20 USB ports
Several hard drives of different sizes
Plenty of fans and extra coolers

What’s the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

It's quite a standard set-up, nothing really stands out. Though, an interesting fact could be the huge amount of fans and extra coolers we use on the computers due to the fact that here the temperature never goes lower than 30-31 degrees Celsius [86-88 degrees Fahrenheit] year round and it is very easy to get any gear overheated. Air conditioners are not enough in Curacao!

What’s always within arm’s reach on your desk?

Laptop Cooler

I should say a notepad and manuals in order to be a good programmer... but actually, it's a big bottle of water to stay hydrated: it allows me to think straight during the long sessions of coding and, if the bottle is not enough, we have a swimming pool in the backyard of the office (Caribbean style).

What are you playing right now?

I don't play a lot of modern AAA games. I’m more a retro gamer. Right beside my desk I have an arcade cabinet where I can play 1000+ arcade games and that’s how I keep the stress away in the short term. Classic games like Pac-Man, Toki and Pang are games that I’m playing a lot lately.

What’s your favorite game and why?

I grew up with the Commodore 64 and the Amiga: my favorite game ever can be either Elite on C64 or Lionheart on Amiga. It’s incredible what they could make on such an old computer.

Tom is PC Gamer’s Associate Editor. He enjoys platformers, puzzles and puzzle-platformers. He also enjoys talking about PC games, which he now no longer does alone. Tune in every Wednesday at 1pm Pacific on Twitch.tv/pcgamer to see Tom host The PC Gamer Show.