How to stop Samsung 9100 PRO 4TB from throttling in TLOU 1?
This drive was honestly turning my motherboard into a radiator; it was hitting 80 degrees and it was insane. Since the 9100 PRO is PCIe 5.0, the controller was hitting 82-88℃ under load, triggering a thermal throttle that tanked my speeds from 12,000MB/s down to a pathetic 1,500MB/s. I tried enabling power-saving mode in the BIOS to cool it down, but that was a joke—it just made loading take 40% longer. I finally gave up and bought an M.2 heatsink with an active fan, setting the fan curve to kick in at 80%. HWMonitor shows the core temp is now locked between 52-61℃, and the read/write lines are flat again. I actually messed up the installation at first by over-tightening the screw, which warped the PCB and made the drive vanish from the BIOS, but a slight loosen fixed it. Power draw is stable at 9-12W. 4-hour stress test passed. Data exported.
