Dealing with thermal throttling on Great Wall GW3300?
Watching my frame rate dive from 80 down to 30 in the middle of a crowded city was a total nightmare. The Great Wall GW3300 512GB just can't handle the heat during sustained reads, with core temps screaming up to 82-88℃, which triggers a hard throttle from the controller. I tried limiting the read speed via software first, but that just made my loading screens last over 3 minutes—absolutely unacceptable. I ended up slapping on a passive heatsink and flipping my case fans to a positive pressure setup. HWMonitor showed the temps plummeting to a comfortable 52-58℃, and my frame time variance shrank from a jittery 15-45ms down to a rock-steady 10-16ms. I actually messed up the first install because the thermal pad was too thick, so it wasn't making contact, and I was still seeing 75℃. Swapping to a 0.5mm pad fixed it. Now I'm seeing 3000-3400MB/s consistently. It's a lesson learned: don't run these small drives naked.
