Why is my NH-D15 G2 causing micro-stutters in Wukong?
Facing the big bosses, I noticed these tiny, infuriating hitches in the animation. It's frustrating when you have a top-tier cooler and still feel this. Telemetry showed that while the Noctua NH-D15 G2 is a beast, there was a 5°C - 8°C transfer lag between the core and the fins under extreme loads, causing the CPU to bounce between 4.5GHz - 5.2GHz. I tried lowering the graphics settings to ease the load, but the frequency jumps persisted. I realized the problem wasn't the cooler, but the air trapped in the case. I added two more front intake fans and flipped the top fans to pure exhaust to get the hot air out faster. After that, the clock fluctuation narrowed down to 4.8GHz - 5.0GHz, and the combat fluidity improved massively. I did have a slight resonance issue after the fan upgrade, but dialing them back to 1200 RPM fixed the noise. Full load temps are now 72°C - 78°C. After several stress cycles, the frame generation time is locked at 5.1ms - 6.4ms.
