Managing thermal throttling on ASRock A320M-HDV R4 in Horizon
This A320 board is honestly a joke. Whenever I fought a big machine, the CPU clock would look like an EKG monitor—just jumping all over the place. Since the VRM heatsink is practically nonexistent, temps would hit 105℃ instantly, crashing my clock from 4.2GHz down to 2.0GHz and tanking my FPS from 60 to 15. I tried taking the side panel off my case, but that just let dust in and only dropped the temp by 3 degrees—totally pointless. I eventually gave up and capped the Max Boost Clock at 3.6GHz in the BIOS and set the fan curve to 100% full blast. According to HWInfo, the VRM finally settled around 85-90℃. I lost some peak performance, but at least the game doesn't just freeze up randomly now. I had some weird stuttering right after capping the frequency, but a clean install of lightweight drivers seemed to help. CPU temps stay around 72-78℃ and power draw is roughly 65W. I exported the logs and the fan speed is pinned at 1400-1600RPM, which is loud as hell but necessary.
