Why is my Thermalright PA120 SE failing in Overwatch 2 matches?
The temperature spikes on this thing are a joke. It's a dual-tower cooler, yet during team fights, temps would jump from 55℃ to 92℃ in a heartbeat, and my FPS would just get sliced in half. The PA120 fans are way too sluggish once you hit 80℃, creating these local hotspots where the sensor sees a 20℃ delta in 0.1 seconds. I tried lowering all the graphics settings, but the game looked like a pixelated mess from ten years ago—it was pure torture. I finally went into the BIOS and set a -0.05V voltage offset and cut the fan response time from 2 seconds down to 0.5 seconds to kill those instant spikes. Looking at the logs, the clock speed jumps went from a wild 2.4-4.8GHz to a stable 4.1-4.5GHz, and that infuriating stuttering finally stopped. I did have some random reboots after the first offset attempt, so I had to back it off to -0.03V to get it stable. Now the CPU stays between 65-72℃ with fans at 1400-1600 RPM. Exported all the thermal data, and the heat management is finally sorted.
