Is the Samsung 9100 PRO overheating in Plague Tale?
About an hour into the game, the screen just started hitching violently, like the whole world was freezing for a split second. Even in the PCIe 5.0 era, thermal throttling is still a pain. The 9100 PRO controller was hitting 82-88℃ under load, triggering a hardware throttle that tanked read speeds from 12000MB/s to below 2500MB/s. I tried locking the PCIe link to Gen4 in the BIOS, which dropped the temp by 10℃, but the bandwidth loss was huge and the hitches still happened—a disappointing compromise. I eventually swapped to an M.2 heatsink with an active cooling fan and disabled the HDD power-saving mode in the Windows Power Plan. Real-time sensors showed the controller staying between 62-68℃, and speeds stayed above 11000MB/s. The frame drops are totally gone. I actually struggled with the thermal pads at first; I didn't apply them flat, and temps actually rose by 5℃ until I redid them. Now it sits at 55-62℃. Three hours of stress testing confirmed no more throttling, and memory temps stayed at 58-63℃.
