CPU possibly thermal throttling.

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Jan 14, 2017
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Hey guys, I have found that after playing Oblivion remastered for an extended period (60-90 minutes) the FPS will drop off from 100+ down to 30ish. Seeing as how my CPU reaches the high 90s in temps I'm suspecting the my CPU is thermal throttling. Problem is I've only had this laptop since last March. It is out of warranty and I'm thinking its either full of dust or needs new thermal paste. I have thermal grizzy kryonaut but read it doesn't like temps above 80c.

Any idea of on what the problem could be and the best thermal paste for cooling the cpu down would be?

Specs are:
ASUS Tuf Gaming F15 2023 model.
12700h CPU
RTX 4070 GPU
32GB RAM
2TB SSD
 
I'd try lifting the laptop off the surface to get more air circulation underneath.

Opening up the back and vacuuming out the fans / internals wouldn't hurt either.

Regarding re-pasting the CPU, I'd watch some tutorials online or ask on Linus Tech Tips' forum to see if anyone had improvements from this procedure on your specific model.
 
My pc would have the fans run high so I took the panel off and saw the fan and heat sink was full of dust so I took the fan off and cleaned both of them but I didn't take the heatsink off and that did the trick. It rarely runs the fans at max. Maybe it's just dusty. I know it's easy to break something taking the cooler off and back on so I'd be careful.
 
I'd try lifting the laptop off the surface to get more air circulation underneath.

Opening up the back and vacuuming out the fans / internals wouldn't hurt either.

Regarding re-pasting the CPU, I'd watch some tutorials online or ask on Linus Tech Tips' forum to see if anyone had improvements from this procedure on your specific model.
It's already on an aluminum stand.
 
I'd just blow out any dust from the heat sinks to start.

The fact that it takes over 30 minutes to overheat suggests that it's mainly an issue with the overall thermal management of the laptop.

Reduce the CPU and GPU load by setting a frame rate cap in the game or with a program like RTSS. You can also try undervolting the GPU or setting a power limit with MSI Afterburner. Your BIOS may also have options for doing this with the CPU as well. It's usually possible to get things to run a lot cooler with little to no loss of performance.
 
I'd just blow out any dust from the heat sinks to start.

The fact that it takes over 30 minutes to overheat suggests that it's mainly an issue with the overall thermal management of the laptop.

Reduce the CPU and GPU load by setting a frame rate cap in the game or with a program like RTSS. You can also try undervolting the GPU or setting a power limit with MSI Afterburner. Your BIOS may also have options for doing this with the CPU as well. It's usually possible to get things to run a lot cooler with little to no loss of performance.
I used in game settings for limit fps to 60 and it helped quite a bit. I'll have to wait until my next 60+ minute gaming session to tell for sure, but I got a steady 60fps.
 
Something is a bit weird with your lap top I think, when mine throttles it only drop the rate from 120+ to 80's where it sits? I only play war thunder which isn't much of a load.

Have a look on youtube how tricky it is open up your laptop, and apply some new paste. My old Asus ROG laptop wasn't terrible to do, and had a couple globs of paste which wasn't quite full contact between the chips and heat tube from the factory. The heat tube mounts had popped off the board which meant it wasn't in good contact with the CPU or GPU chips and couldn't run any games without throttling instantly. I was able the put the mounts on the other side of the board and bolted everything down tight again, and seems to run as good as new.

My research didn't really turn up any differences between thermal paste? You need like 3 ml so just get something decent in a tiny tube. Ideally you need zero if the heat-tube made flush contact with the chips, but I guess that isn't always possible. I was into mine after several years and was surprised at the lack of dust bunnies in the cooling fins, so I doubt yours is just dirty.
I also run my games at the least detail possible to maintain high frame rates with little throttling as possible.

In hindsight I wouldn't buy a gaming laptop again as I don't use it anywhere but on my desk, and a comparable used desktop box is pretty cheap, and has 100 times the cooling....
 
The fact that it takes over 30 minutes to overheat suggests that it's mainly an issue with the overall thermal management of the laptop.

I agree with this. You're overheating anyways but you should see the issues pretty quickly, not after 30 mins of oblivion remastered. But if your CPU and GPU stays at a constant high temp and you don't notice an fps drop in the first 29 minutes, then something else is the culprit. But, you can blow out the dust and redo the thermal paste if you want; if that's not the issue then at least you know you got new paste on it anyways.

Are you having issues in any other game? Nvidia's drivers after 566.36 introduced stutters like crazy in my games and I had to roll back. My fps was 'fine' but in a fast paced game, you you know can tell when it stutters in a nano second.

Edit: I think I'm still getting boot issues with 566.36 so I'm going to rollback one more.
 
I know a lot of lot of folks like the liquid metal thermal paste, and it can result in a 5 degree drop. But can't be used with aluminum heat sinks.

And that's probably not a real fix for your problem. It may help if you are on the edge and get you a few more minutes before it throttles, but it seems the thing simply heats up steadily over time due to the inability to discharge the BTU's.
 
I'm using FPS monitor and MSI Afterburner. The CPU is HOT by the time I quit gaming. I'm talking 97-98c.

But limiting FPS to 60fps has helped a lot.
That's not an insane hotspot temp for modern silicon. If you just log CPU utilization or clock speed you can verify that it's actually throttling. Bethesda games are ridiculously buggy and Oblivion Remastered still runs on Gamebryo/Creation engine.
 
The game has bugs, try closing and reopening game to check for memory leaks etc.
if game is fast again after restart (and doesnt slow down within a few mins)
might just be the game.
 
My gaming laptop gets pretty hot while gaming. Probably not the CPU but the GPU that is generating all the heat and causing it to throttle. If I'm playing something that really stresses the equipment, I put it on a cooling pad to help keep it cooled.

https://www.amazon.com/HV-F2056-15-...refix=laptop+cool,electronics,133&sr=1-5&th=1

Something like that, although this isn't the one I have so I don't know if this one is any good, its just the first one that came up in a quick search.

Also, blow out your fans and heatsink every once in a while, you would be surprised how much dirt the laptop will pick up in a short period of time.

If you still run into issues, you'll need to take it apart and check the thermal grease on the CPU/GPU heatsinks. Some companies (like Dell it seems these days) use a really cheap and terrible thermal grease that dries out very fast and ends up doing nothing to help with the heat transfer. Clean it all off and replace it with some quality thermal grease, this will help a lot with keeping things cool.

Dell seems to use the cheapest grease I have seen in a while on their new equipment. We use Dells at work and the micro desktops have to be opened and the thermal grease replaced or they will overheat under regular use.
 
That’s why gaming laptops suck. Your GPU and CPU likely share the same heat pipe(s) and the GPU is heating up your CPU too much it seems. The game along shouldn’t task the CPU much.

Download MSI afterburner and limit the power to your GPU. It will lower the FPS a bit, but the GPU will produce much less heat.

 
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That’s why gaming laptops suck. Your GPU and CPU likely share the same heat pipe(s) and the GPU is heating up your CPU too much it seems. The game along shouldn’t task the CPU much.

Download MSI afterburner and limit the power to your GPU. It will lower the FPS a bit, but the GPU will produce much less heat.
The GPU never goes over 70c, it's the CPU that gets hotter than heck. I'm seeing big improvements on Oblivion Remastered by limiting my FPS to 60.
 
This thread had me thinking about a project I saw years ago. The idea was to provide freezing cold air to the CPU cooler. A small floor mounted air-conditioner configured to produce 33ºF air, and a 2 inch duct to to where it is needed. Something like that would be great for laptops.
 
The laptop is a little over a year old. I used to use MSI afterburner and Riva Tuner with Oblivion Remastered but Riva interacts with UE5 and makes stuttering worse.

I just bought the little doohickie Marcozi posted a link to. My main question right now is, is the CPU on the right or left side of the laptop?
 
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