How to fix Kioxia EXCERIA PRO 1TB overheating in Horizon Zero Dawn?
The moment I entered the dense jungle areas, the game started stuttering like crazy, and at 4K resolution, it was just eyesore. The controller on my Kioxia EXCERIA PRO 1TB was spiking to 82-88℃ during sustained reads, triggering a hardware thermal throttle that tanked my speeds from 7000MB/s down to a pathetic 1200MB/s. I tried the 'easy' fix of dropping the PCIe link to Gen 3 in the BIOS, but while it cooled down, my load times increased by nearly 40%, which was a total dealbreaker. I ended up swapping in an active heatsink with a fan and locked the RPM at 2500. Monitoring through HWInfo, the drive now peaks at 58-64℃, keeping reads steady at 6800-7200MB/s. To be fair, when I first installed the heatsink, I over-tightened the screws and caused a slight bend in the board, which took some careful recalibration to fix. Controller power is now steady at 7-9W with only a 3℃ variance. After a two-hour stress test, the throttling is gone. Link fixed.
