Stopping thermal throttling on Gainward RTX 2060?
Every time I stepped into a dense forest, my FPS would tank from 50 down to 28, and the sudden chugging was honestly stressing me out. The Gainward RTX 2060 was hitting 88-92℃ under load, triggering a hardware thermal throttle that crushed my clock speed from 1695MHz down to about 1300MHz. I tried switching Windows to 'Ultimate Performance' mode, but while the fans spun faster, the temps stayed high—it felt like fighting a losing battle. I eventually tore the card down, swapped in some high-performance thermal pads, and aggressivey tweaked the fan curve in MSI Afterburner to hit 90% speed once it reaches 70-80℃. Checking HWInfo, the core finally stabilized at 72-78℃, and the drops stopped. I almost bent the PCB by over-tightening the heatsink screws, which was a close call. Now it runs at 70-76℃ with fans at 2200-2500 RPM. A one-hour stress test proves the clock curve is finally flat.
