How to stop Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB from overheating in GTA VI?
When speeding through the city, my FPS would suddenly plummet from 120 to 40, which sent me into a full-blown troubleshooting frenzy. The FireCuda 530 is blisteringly fast, but it runs hot as hell. After 15 minutes of heavy use, temps hit 88-95℃, triggering a hardware thermal throttle that crashed my I/O throughput from 7000 MB/s to a pathetic 1500 MB/s. I tried dropping the PCIe link to Gen3 in the BIOS, but that just made loading times unbearable—not a viable trade-off. I eventually ripped off the stock heatsink, slapped on some high-performance thermal pads, and added a dedicated 60mm fan blowing directly on the drive. HWiNFO now shows peaks capped at 65-72℃, and the stuttering is completely gone. Initially, the new fan messed up my case airflow and bumped CPU temps by 4℃, but adjusting the front intake fans balanced it out. The drive now sits at 52-58℃, and frame times are locked at 5.1-6.4ms.
