Fixing thermal throttling with Thermalright PA120 SE in Banishers
The game would suddenly go from smooth sailing to a literal slideshow, which completely killed the atmosphere while exploring the ghost world. Looking at my logs, the CPU was hovering between 88℃ - 94℃, hitting the thermal wall and forcing a massive downclock. I tried the 'desperation move' of taking off the case side panel and blasting it with a house fan, but temps only dropped by 3℃—clearly, the cooler base wasn't seating right. I ripped off the PA120 SE, swapped the stock paste for a high-performance 14W/mK compound, and carefully recalibrated the mounting bracket pressure. After booting back in, core temps stabilized at 65℃ - 72℃, and those cliff-dive frame drops vanished. I actually spent twenty minutes doubting if the bracket was warped until I swapped the screws and finally got a tight fit. Fan speeds are now idling at 1200-1500 RPM, which is barely audible. Ran an AIDA64 FPU stress test to confirm the curve is flat and the thermal issue is dead and buried.
