Why is my Noctua NH-D15 G2 failing in Shadow of the Erdtree?
The optimization in this game is a joke. I have a top-tier cooler and it still managed to trigger a full system shutdown. The Noctua NH-D15 G2 chromax.black is a beast, but during these insane power spikes, I saw temps jump to 92-96℃, which triggered the motherboard's OVP/OTP protection and rebooted the PC. I tried lowering the PL1/PL2 power limits in the BIOS, but that just cost me 15 FPS without stopping the crashes—total waste of time. I eventually ripped the cooler off and applied a 0.12mm high-conductivity liquid metal compound and set my case to positive pressure. Running AIDA64 FPU, temps plummeted from 95℃ to a manageable 78-82℃, and the random restarts finally stopped. I actually messed up the mounting pressure at first, causing a weird temp delta, but re-torquing the screws fixed it. VRM temps are now sitting at 60-65℃, and frame times are locked at 5.1-6.4ms. It's a lot of effort for a game, but it works.
