Fixing Samsung 9100 PRO 8TB thermal issues in God of War
This 8TB beast is insanely fast thanks to PCIe 5.0, but it literally runs like a small space heater on my motherboard, which is just ridiculous. During heavy combat when assets are streaming in, the Samsung 9100 PRO would spike to 82-85℃, triggering hardware-level thermal throttling that crashed my FPS from 144 down to 40—it felt like a slideshow. I tried capping the slot to PCIe 4.0, but that just killed my load speeds, which felt like a total defeat. Instead, I cranked my front intake fans to a screaming 2200 RPM and swapped in some 1.5mm high-conductivity thermal pads. HWInfo now shows temps pinned between 62-68℃, and the stuttering is completely gone. I actually snapped a plastic clip while installing the heatsink, and it wobbled for the first half hour until I secured it with zip ties. Read speeds are now a consistent 11000-12000MB/s. I've exported all the temp logs to confirm the fix, and the data looks clean.
