Fixing thermal issues for Thermalright PA120 V3 in Gears 5?
About an hour into the game, my FPS would slowly slide from 120 down to 90, and the fans would start sounding like a jet engine. It was a very obvious performance dip. Monitoring showed the CPU hitting a 95℃ thermal wall, which crashed the clock speed from 5.0GHz down to 3.8GHz. I first tried limiting the CPU power via software, but while it dropped the temp by 10℃, my FPS fell below 60, which was unacceptable. I ended up stripping the cooler and applying high-conductivity liquid metal paste, then set the PA120 V3 fan curve to 100% full blast between 70-80℃. In stress tests, core temps dropped from 95℃ to a range of 74-81℃, and clocks stayed between 4.8-5.1GHz. I actually had a 12℃ delta between cores during the first mount because of uneven pressure, but re-tightening the screws in the correct order fixed it. Fans now sit between 1500-1800 RPM, which is loud but tolerable. I verified the temp curves via HWInfo, and the cooling is now solid.
