Tuning Thermalright PA120 SE for Unknown 9: Awakening?
In some of the more complex stealth sections, my CPU temps were bouncing between 85 and 95℃, which was honestly stressful to watch. The default fan curve on the PA120 SE had a response lag of about 2 seconds, meaning the core would hit the thermal ceiling and throttle down to 3.0GHz before the fans even sped up. I tried setting the fans to 'Full Speed' in the BIOS, but that just made my PC sound like a jet engine without actually fixing the temperature swings—a total fail. I went into the advanced motherboard settings and slashed the PWM response time from 0.7s to 0.1s, and mapped a linear ramp between 60-80℃. HWInfo now shows cores staying steady between 68-75℃. I did deal with some annoying fan resonance during the first few tweaks, but capping the max speed at 1800 RPM fixed it. Idle temps are around 38-42℃. Thermal throttling is gone, and frame times have stabilized at 5.1-6.4ms. It's much quieter now.
