How not to TIM...

nova.ace47 · September 16, 2018

So I go to hop into an Overwatch game with a buddy and he is complaining about his framerate (somewhere about 45 fps). This surprised me because that game will run on a toaster and as he said when he dropped the graphics quality it didn't get better. So he wants to build a new rig. My immediate thought was CPU limiting but his build is (old but still good) an i7-2700 with a GTX 980 and 16GB ram. So I told him that I would come check it out.

I get over there and his setup was pretty nice, dual 24" 144hz monitors are such a shame when you're system can only push 45 fps in your favorite game. The desktop seemed responsive enough so I hop into the bios to see what was up. No big red flags but I did see that his ram was only running at the lowest speed (it is good Corsair ram) so I thought what the hell and tossed the XMP profile on. No post, black screen, so into the case I go to reset. This is when I notice the Intel low profile stock cooler (utterly caked in dust). My first thought was thermal, but he wasn't getting any crashing or thermal warnings. I reset the CMOS and blew out the system some, boot back into Windows and toss HWMonitor on.

The damn CPU was idling at 85° C. <-- There's your problem.

I decided to pop the cooler off to see what was up, which is how I saw this:

He's had this system running like this for years, I have no idea how. The pre-applied paste must have dried in the packaging or something. Anyway, slapped on new thermal paste, ordered a Hyper 212, and he's back up and running at 140-180 fps.