Is mounting pressure the cause of NH-D15S heat in Metro?
In the freezing wasteland of the game, my CPU temps were weirdly spiking to 85-90℃, which felt totally wrong. The Noctua NH-D15S is a beast, but I noticed Core 1 and Core 4 were 12℃ hotter than the others—a clear sign of uneven contact between the base and the IHS. I tried cranking the fans to max, but that only dropped temps by 2℃ and just added noise; I wasn't hitting the root cause. I tore the whole thing down, checked the base flatness, and used a torque wrench to perfectly calibrate the mounting pressure. In HWiNFO, the core delta shrank from 12℃ to a tight 3-5℃, with max temps settling at 72-78℃. I actually had a scare where paste leaked onto the motherboard capacitors, and I had to scrub it off with isopropyl alcohol before booting. Now the fans stay at 1100-1300 RPM, and it's whisper quiet. 8 hours of heavy load later and zero throttling recorded.
