Hugh Jeremy works at Unknown Worlds—best known for Natural Selection 2, Future Perfect, and Subnautica—and he's got a rig cholk-full of water cooling. As Hugh explains below, the components of this powerful PC were originally in a case he custom built, which is unfortunately not very portable. Hugh was kind enough to show us his impressive setup and tell us about some of his favorite parts of PC gaming. 

What's in your PC?

• Intel i7-5820k @ 4Ghz
• 32GB of DDR4 RAM
• GTX 980
• 6Tb spinning disk storage
• 1Tb solid state storage
• EK CPU block
• Swiftech 320mm radiator
• EK 5.25in bay reservoir
• Laing D5 w/ EK top
• Laing DDC w/ EK top
• X99 board
• AX1200i PSU
• 4-bank fan controller
• About 1.5 litres of water

All of that feeds an Asus 2560 x 1440 screen at the magical 144hz.

There's also a Razer Blade & Macbook Pro 13 sitting here. I'm in the process of transferring from the former to the latter. Blasphemy, I know. From a parts perspective the i7 5557U in the Macbook is a really interesting little package. It's also pulling 1.1Gb/s read/write off the SSD, so credit to Apple where it's due.

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

This machine is a bit weird, because it's derived from parts transferred from a custom water-cooling focused case I built out of aluminium and tears. At Unknown Worlds, we have a lot of freedom to work wherever we want on the planet. I was using my custom case in the San Francisco office, but at the moment I am working in Australia. I couldn't transfer the rig across the Pacific, disassembling it takes days, reassembling it takes days. So for now many of the parts live on in this Corsair case until I've got the guts to break out the power tools again and give them a proper home. The itch is growing.

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

At the moment Statistical Analysis by Ya-lun Chou. It's not as boring as it sounds. Crunching data can help make better development decisions, and better games. For example, at Unknown Worlds we collect vast amounts of anonymous data about Subnautica's performance in the wild. From that data, we can work out what we're doing badly. For example, we were able to precisely measure out-of-memory crash prevalence, see that it was affecting large number of players, and devote the resources necessary to remedy it. 

Recently we worked out that 20%+ of Subnautica customers were trying to play with GPUs below min-spec, so now we're doing a better job of communicating min-spec, and assisting customers who don't meet it by providing information about GPU upgrades and so on. Chou makes sure I don't spout statistical lies.

What are you playing right now?

My Steam favourites list currently features Future Perfect, DayZ, Kerbal Space Program, Maia, Natural Selection 2, and Subnautica. A lot of these games aren't finished, or were available initially in a very unfinished state. I think this is one of the most exciting parts of PC gaming. We can be part of and influence the creative process.

What's your favorite game and why?

Right now, my favourite game is  Future Perfect. It's another Unknown Worlds game. I'm not trying to plug it though, I'm being genuine. I don't get time to play it much, and it's at a very early stage. But there is just so much potential. It neatly captures the strengths of PC gaming—access to unfinished games, iteration on those games, modding, openness.