Is the Thermalright PA120 SE enough for Tekken 8 CPU spikes?
During some intense combo exchanges, my CPU temp shot up to 92℃ in under 30 seconds. I honestly wondered if the PA120 SE was trying to double as a space heater. Those fragmented frame drops are a total nightmare for a fighting game. My first move was setting the BIOS fans to 'Full Speed,' but while it dropped the temp by 5℃, the noise was like a jet engine taking off in my room—absolutely unbearable. I ended up stripping the cooler, applying high-conductivity paste, and manually setting the PWM curve to kick in at 60℃ and hit 100% at 80℃. In AIDA64 stress tests, the core temp stabilized at 72-78℃ instead of the previous 90-95℃, and the FPS drops vanished. I actually messed up the first paste application and used way too much, which caused a weird noise on boot until I cleaned the edges. Now the fans stay between 1400-1600 RPM with CPU load at 65-75%. I've archived the thermal logs, and everything looks solid, though the fan ramp-up is still a bit audible.
