Why is my Soyo SY-Yanlong B550M throttling in Cyberpunk?
When pushing through those neon-soaked high-density districts, the VRM modules on my Soyo SY-Yanlong B550M were hitting a brutal 98-104℃. This thermal soak triggered a hard hardware protection limit, tanking my CPU clocks from 4.6GHz down to a pathetic 1.1GHz, making the game feel like a slideshow. I initially tried locking 'High Performance' in Windows, but that actually accelerated the heat buildup and caused a full system reboot after fifteen minutes—which was honestly baffling. I eventually slapped some aluminum heatsinks on the VRM area and dove into the BIOS to tweak the long-term power limit (PPT) from 65W down to 45W. Checking HWInfo, the VRM temps dropped to a manageable 76-82℃, and the clock speeds finally stabilized between 3.7-4.6GHz. It was a bit of a struggle at first because my thermal pads were uneven, and I didn't see any improvement until I swapped them for 0.5mm pads. Now the CPU cores sit comfortably at 65-72℃ with fans humming at 2100 RPM. Stress tests confirm no more throttling, and my frame times are finally consistent at 5.1-6.4ms.
