Why is my Thermalright PA120 V3 struggling in TLOU2?
When rendering heavy vegetation, my CPU temps spiked from 65℃ to 96℃ in seconds, causing the clock speeds to jump around like crazy. It was a total nightmare. The stock fan profile on the Thermalright PA120 V3 is way too sluggish below 70℃, letting heat soak into the cores. I tried switching the Windows power plan to Balanced, but that just killed my FPS by about 10 frames while only dropping temps by 3℃—completely unacceptable. I eventually dove into the BIOS and set up a stepped PWM curve, triggering 80% fan speed as soon as it hits 65℃, and bumped up the intake on my front chassis fans. Checking HWiNFO, the peak temps now stay clamped between 74℃ - 80℃, with frequencies stabilizing at 4.0-4.3GHz. At first, the noise was unbearable, but I dialed the speed down to 30% for anything under 45℃ to find that sweet spot. Now it sits at 1200-1500 RPM. After some heavy stress testing, the throttling is gone and the settings are saved.
