Why is my ThermalRight PA140 overheating one core?
This is ridiculous. Playing an action game and having a single CPU core hit 98℃ is an insult to cooling. This massive imbalance caused my clock speeds to swing wildly between 3.0GHz and 4.8GHz, making the game hitch during warp jumps—it was honestly pathetic. I first tried underclocking all cores via software, but that killed 20% of my performance, which is just a waste of expensive hardware. I ripped the cooler off and found a tiny air gap on the base. I reapplied high-grade thermal paste and used the cross-pattern method to tighten the screws evenly. In HWInfo, the core delta dropped from 28℃ to a much better 10℃ - 12℃, and FPS finally stabilized around 110. I actually snapped a plastic clip during the second attempt, but I had a spare and got it sorted. CPU full-load temps are now 70℃ - 76℃ with fans at 1400 RPM. I exported the fan profile from BIOS, and the backup is complete.
