Stopping thermal throttling on Samsung 9100 PRO?
Riding through Saint Denis, the game would have these periodic micro-stutters, like a film strip skipping a frame. The PCIe 5.0 link on the Samsung 9100 PRO 4TB was hitting 82-88℃ during 4K texture streaming, triggering a hardware throttle that tanked my read speeds from 12000MB/s down to 3000MB/s. I tried capping the PCIe slot to 4.0, which lowered the temps but added 10 seconds to every load screen—definitely not the way to go. I ended up swapping to a 1.5mm high-conductivity thermal pad and locked my bottom chassis fans to 2000 RPM. In RivaTuner, the frame time spikes dropped from 45ms to a smooth 12-16ms. I had some weird detection delays for the first half hour after swapping the pads, but recalibrating the heatsink pressure solved it. Temps are now stable at 62-68℃, and it's rock steady after 3 hours of testing.
