CPU Temp Issues on New PC

[David_M]

My wife got me a new Gigabyte G5 laptop (i5 10500H, RTX 3060). I was thrilled to fire up PoE as one of my first games. While it runs every other game I've tried no problems, inc. some big ones such as EU4, PoE causes the CPU temperature to regularly hit between 70-80 C running on 1920 x 1080 at highest settings. This causes the fans to go into overdrive. It sounds an airplane taking off.

The weirdest thing is that when I tab into windows to check on the heat and fan stats, the temp immediately begins to drop -- even though the game is still running. It's only while I'm in the game, even doing nothing with it on pause, that the CPU temp flares up again and the fans go nuts.

Any ideas on how I might fix/mitigate this issue?

[noobie123]

did you put a fps cap or enable vsync? if you leave it uncapped, the laptop will try to run as many fps it can. this can cause the CPU to run in turbo mode as well, raising the temps.

[David_M]

@noobie123 -> No, I didn't think to cap the fps. I'll do that now and see if it helps. Thanks so much!

[Stiffmeister]

70 - 80 ingame temp on a laptop seems pretty normal to me. I have also have a high end laptop, bit older, with i7 and GTX980, and those temps are perfectly normal, this laptop was my main gaming station from 2016 till 2020, and its still solid for when I cant take my desktop with me.

As for the temperature drop when you alt tab, that is perfectly normal behavior.

One thing you can try to get better temps is using one of those laptop bases. Nevermind the expensive ones with super special fans or whatever, thats irrelevant, its just about the bottom of the laptop having more space to draw fresh air, any raised platform with airflow will do.

cheers

[David_M]

@noobie123 -> I tried capping fps at 105, and unfortunately no luck. Still hitting 73-75 C on the CPU and fans are in takeoff mode. I checked and vsync is enabled too.

[David_M]

Originally posted by germanbattle83:

70 - 80 ingame temp on a laptop seems pretty normal to me.

Thanks, germanbattle83. I should have specified I'm getting those temps with it elevated (no cooling fan, though). Maybe I should invest in one of those.

I guess it's just weird to me that it runs other, more modern/demanding games cooler and quieter. I'm not sure how hot is too hot, but since nothing else I've tried hit these temps, I was concerned.

I'd love to invest in a nice desktop rig, but my man cave just got converted to our baby's room. Hence the laptop. :)

[WhitePhantom]

Pillars of Eternity is on Unity engine and is secretly quite demanding on the CPU! The basic 3D models on 2D backgrounds may fool you. Lock frames to 60

[David_M]

Originally posted by WhitePhantom:

Pillars of Eternity is on Unity engine and is secretly quite demanding on the CPU! The basic 3D models on 2D backgrounds may fool you. Lock frames to 60

Will do. Thanks, WhitePhantom!

[Ironfist]

Put ingame settings fps cap to 60

[Duder]

I'm running at 144hz setting I'm wondering if I should set it to 60 as well
Then again I've yet to see an app that displays CPU temp, not sure why Nvidia doesn't do it, not even task manager
However I've been curious how hot it's actually getting, I have a closed liquid cooling for my CPU too

Really the only "issue" I ever get with this game is a slight stutter when scrolling the map on occasion, also for whatever reason the font used in this game's text causes a weird optical illusion for me that makes some words/letters appear larger on different lines

[Bob]

If youre that concerned just cap to 30 fps, games like these just look and play better at lower fps imo. I have a ryzen 5 3600 and a gtx 1080 and i will happily play games at 30 fps, the only thing i cannot suffer low fps on is shooters, you need 144hz for those.

[Duder]

Did you mean GPU temp? Because I've noticed setting my FPS to 75 decreases my GPU temp for this game for some reason, noticibly quieter GPU fan

Also when you tab into Windows, the temp will naturally drop for many games as GPU isn't carrying a load in the background

[David_M]

@Duder - No, it's just the CPU temp. Even dropping the framerates doesn't seem to help.

[Duder]

Originally posted by Liberty or Death:

@Duder - No, it's just the CPU temp. Even dropping the framerates doesn't seem to help.

How do you get a read on your CPU temp? I have only ever seen that in the BIOS
You're using a laptop right, not a whole lot of room for hot air to move around in there too
I don't understand, the game isn't even that CPU intensive compared to some others, but I can understand how annoying a loud PC can be
At any rate, I wouldn't worry about the game harming your computer if the case

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

The way PoE utilizes Unity engine is not optimized and/or not well-written in some parts of the program. For example, during character creation a single large 3D model of the character is shown, else nothing is rendered, but load increases much probably because an idle loop is missing, and fans may spin up as a result. It should be better later in the game, but then tons of 2D animations serve as a different hardware stress test due to how Unity engine is used.

[Duder]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

The way PoE utilizes Unity engine is not optimized and/or not well-written in some parts of the program. For example, during character creation a single large 3D model of the character is shown, else nothing is rendered, but load increases much probably because an idle loop is missing, and fans may spin up as a result. It should be better later in the game, but then tons of 2D animations serve as a different hardware stress test due to how Unity engine is used.

The big draw I get in resources is the chanter's summon skeletons spell, as well as some of his other spells seem to kill the FPS for whatever reason, it's not a huge deal