Inconsistent CPU temperatures when gaming (Acer desktop)

Aster
Aster ✭✭
Photogenic Name Dropper First Comment
edited May 2021 in General Discussion

Buckle up, I'm providing as much info as possible to get to the bottom of this.


I brought home an acer predator orion 3000 (po3-620 with i7 10700 and RTX 2060 super) a little over a week ago, but a few days later I noticed the CPU was getting VERY hot in gaming, namely in the 95C area in Destiny 2 for several hours (yes I played it that long just to make sure it was going to stay there and tried closing things to see if it helped). I tried a few things afterwards and was happy to see temps were 60-70C the next day and for a whole week after. This is what I did:

  1. stopped using chrome altogether, have been using firefox instead
  2. changed the power profile back to "Acer" (default) from "balanced" (which I changed it to on a whim shortly after setting up the pc)
  3. plugged in an Ethernet cable just in case the Wifi 6 is hot or something.
  4. re-installed geforce experience (installed it day 1, uninstalled it day 2, reinstalled day 3)

Tonight I am getting a similar issue again, though I'm not letting the CPU get above 85-89C before turning off the game. It seems OK in idle game activity, but heats up in matchmade activities.

The thing is, this week, I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider on highest settings, even streamed it on discord while doing so; AC Origins performed well earlier today and the day after my "fixes"; I probably clocked in about 2-4 hours of D2/Subnautica BZ every day this week because school ended and the CPU was fine. The reason I know the CPU wasn't getting too hot (besides occasional monitoring) is that the case fans get extremely loud (like AC in a truck) if the CPU goes above 75C-ish for too long. The RTX has been getting the low 80s (usually 60-79 though) but I am told that's normal for something of its caliber.


Other notes:

-I unplugged the Ethernet cable 2-3 days ago but I am not convinced this is the issue as I did not see immediate changes.

-Idle, the CPU can be anywhere between 40-70C, usually 60-70 when I'm downloading or installing stuff, and in the 50s-60s when I'm using my art program (Clip Studio, I work in high resolutions), which is normal to the best of my knowledge. When just using firefox and discord, it tends to be in the high 40s/low 50s.

-I shut down the PC every night around the same time and wake it up every morning for work and play. After shutting down, there is a fast and quiet clicking in the PSU area that does not stop unless I unplug it entirely.

-Destiny 2 is on the SSD (C drive) while most of my other games are on the D drive.

TL;DR, I'm very confused because it was working like a charm since last Tuesday and I was sure the culprit was the power profile. Does it need better paste on the CPU cooler? A BIOS check?

EDIT next morning: temps are back to "normal", of course, after I spend hours overnight researching, but I am still at a loss to what is going on so I have tried something courtesy acer forums/reddit, though it was mostly suggested for laptops.

Both of these numbers were at 100% and the CPU has consistently been above 4000mhz since I unboxed it. So Acer had it boosting the whole time. Now it is sitting around 2700 and doesn't even hit 50C in Destiny. 60FPS 1080p is all I need right now so I HOPE this is a sturdy solution; at least until I can Frankenstein the whole build into a bigger case with better fans (and bigger psu if compatible ones come around) in a year or so. (I set the minimum to 5% after some more googling and may try this with the max set back to 100%).

Here are the temps in Destiny 2 before and after my initial group of fixes. As you can see the CPU % and GPU values are roughly the same so something else may still be going on. You can also see the difference between WiFi and Ethernet here.



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