How to stop VRM thermal throttling on Asrock H310CM-ITX/ac?
When hitting those heavy lighting scenes, the tiny power delivery on the Asrock H310CM-ITX/ac spikes to a brutal 95-102℃. This triggers a hardware-level panic, tanking my CPU clock from 3.6GHz down to a pathetic 0.8GHz instantly, which makes the game feel like a slideshow. I initially tried locking the max frequency in software, but that was a mistake—it just cooked the VRMs faster and led to a full system black-out after ten minutes. I realized physical airflow was the only way out. I rigged up a 4cm mini fan to blast the VRM heatsinks directly and dove into the BIOS to nudge the Long Duration Power Limit down from 65W to 45W. Checking HWiNFO, the VRM temps dropped from that 100℃ danger zone to a manageable 78-84℃, and the clocks stabilized between 3.2-3.6GHz. It was a struggle at first because my fan was actually fighting the case airflow, causing heat to build up until I flipped the fan to exhaust mode. Now, the CPU cores sit comfortably at 68-75℃ with the fan humming at 3000 RPM. Stress tests confirm no more throttling, and my frame times are rock steady at 5.1-6.4ms.
