Is my MasterLiquid B240 causing lag in Civ 7 late game?
About three hours into a session, my frame rate would slowly bleed from 60 FPS down to 35 FPS. This kind of gradual performance decay is the worst. The Cooler Master MasterLiquid B240 was suffering from heat soak under prolonged load, leaving my core temps hovering around 88-92℃. I tried running some memory cleaners, which did absolutely nothing and actually made the stutters worse—I was honestly just venting at that point. I finally went into the BIOS, switched the pump from Auto to a constant 100%, and used compressed air to blow the dust out of the radiator fins. In a stress test similar to CrystalDiskMark, my peak temps dropped from 92℃ to 76-80℃, and my FPS locked back at 60. I did notice some coil whine once the pump was maxed out, but a tiny -0.01V offset made it bearable. Water temps are now 35-41℃. I used the motherboard backup tool to save the profile, and the performance is finally consistent again.
