Overheating issues

[L. Velociraptor]

I play Astroneer in two places: On my work PC during breaks (GTX 1080) and on my personal laptop at home (GTX 1060, yes a desktop card. Not a mobile card.) and both machines have heat-related issues.

My work PC is a tower and IT's normal config makes sure it's good for anyone in the building so it's got a ton of fans to handle graphics work and such... My personal laptop is a Sager, it's got copper heatpiping, and a great fan. I typically have no problems with it.

Both machines kick fan speed to max within 10~ minutes of starting Astroneer. Normally I'd say, "Oh, my laptop must not be able to handle it..." and then think that's weird because it's well above recommended specs for the game. However, no matter what graphics settings I try (Astroneer runs fine but still has this issue on Ultra) or which machine it is, the fans kick to max speed very fast. It's clearly not just a problem with my laptop, especially when it has no problem handling things like Monster Hunter World... My laptop just has more trouble dissipating the excess heat.

I'm thinking this might be an optimization issue and I just wanted to make sure to bring it to the System Era's attention as most of the reports of this that I've seen are pretty old.

I'll also add in that I've been playing Astroneer since the first early access build and post-1.0 is honestly the fist time this has happened, both on my personal laptop and my work PC.

Laptop Specifications:

OS: Windows 10 Pro | Version 1709 | Build 16299.248
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ | 2.8GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 | 6GB Ram | Driver 382.05
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2400MHz Dual Channel
Drive: HGST 1TB 7200RPM
Notes: My laptop does have an Intel integrated graphics chip but I have disabled it as I never use it.

[SilverWarior]

Try playing astroneer in windowed mode. This would force its FPS to stay with the FPS of your monitor and thus reduce the load of the graphics card.

[L. Velociraptor]

Originally posted by SilverWarior:

Try playing astroneer in windowed mode. This would force its FPS to stay with the FPS of your monitor and thus reduce the load of the graphics card.

I gave that a shot while monitoring my temp levels and it looks like this will at least let me continue playing the game without worry!

I also noticed that the heat would be mainly coming from my CPU, which I feel correctly confirms my hypothesis that this issue is due to optimization problems. Perhaps on the Intel family of processors?

[Subquake]

You can't blame a video game for your computer overheating, that's your problem to keep your computer cool, not the developers.

If you are playing games on a laptop, I would suggest to purchase a laptop stand, that has built in fans, that keep your laptop cooled, especially while gaming, you can get them for just a few bucks, worth the investment, I had a laptop stand for my laptop back when I had a laptop and it helped to keep my laptop cool tremendously. Also make sure to clean your computer regularly from dust, that adds up, at least once per two years a proper cleaning is required, sometimes even changing thermal paste where it's applicable.

And another thing - You can't compare games like Monster Hunter World and Astroneer, because Astroneer is a much more complicated game, with a lot of stuff going in the background, the terrain is fully destructible and everything you do in the world is persistent and the computer must keep track about everything, that's going in the world, it requires a lot of computing power to do so.

Astroneer could be comparable more to games like No Mans Sky, that also requires a lot of horse power to run the game, because of how the game worlds are designed. But you can't compare games with simplistic mechanics with games with a lot of complicated computing algorithms, it's like comparing a toaster with a spacecraft.

[L. Velociraptor]

That's not the issue at all. The issue is that poor optimization is causing the core temp of my CPU to spike on both my work PC and my home laptop. I have a stand, as well, and am very aware of how to handle my laptop's heat dissipation.

Furthermore I can very much compare MH:W and Astroneer in terms of their load on my system and the heat output generated. Astroneer is not as well optimized as it could be and this has been an issue since the very first Early Access build.

Also are you really making the "oh but that game is SIMPLE, this game is COMPLICATED" argument? That doesn't stand. MH:W is complicated enough to have far higher system requirements than Astroneer (both CPU and GPU) and it also does not cause either my personal laptop or my work PC any issues running it.

I'm also wondering if you even read all of what I said considering I made it clear that I never had this issue on ANY of the early access builds and I played right up until launch.

The issue is still that either the game is poorly optimized and is causing much more processing than is needed, or the reported recommended specifications for the game need to be amended.

[Duke of Leamington]

Cyberpunk on Ultra with Raytracing doesn’t make my PC fans loud as much as Astroneer can in 5 minutes of gameplay

soo… I disagree

Originally posted by Subquake:

You can't blame a video game for your computer overheating, that's your problem to keep your computer cool, not the developers.

If you are playing games on a laptop, I would suggest to purchase a laptop stand, that has built in fans, that keep your laptop cooled, especially while gaming, you can get them for just a few bucks, worth the investment, I had a laptop stand for my laptop back when I had a laptop and it helped to keep my laptop cool tremendously. Also make sure to clean your computer regularly from dust, that adds up, at least once per two years a proper cleaning is required, sometimes even changing thermal paste where it's applicable.

And another thing - You can't compare games like Monster Hunter World and Astroneer, because Astroneer is a much more complicated game, with a lot of stuff going in the background, the terrain is fully destructible and everything you do in the world is persistent and the computer must keep track about everything, that's going in the world, it requires a lot of computing power to do so.

Astroneer could be comparable more to games like No Mans Sky, that also requires a lot of horse power to run the game, because of how the game worlds are designed. But you can't compare games with simplistic mechanics with games with a lot of complicated computing algorithms, it's like comparing a toaster with a spacecraft.

[thaeren7]

I've turned ON the V-Sync and my notebook went 190ºF to 130ºF in a couple of minutes. Some forums have said that playing windowed would solve the FPS/overheating issue, but for me was the V-Sync, even with high graphics

Originally posted by Plysovej_Kaktus:

Cyberpunk on Ultra with Raytracing doesn’t make my PC fans loud as much as Astroneer can in 5 minutes of gameplay