When I play certain games, my PC temperature rises to around 85°C and the fans suddenly ramp up. This happens every 10–30 seconds, which is distracting and seems excessive. The thermal paste is probably 3–4 years old, so I'm wondering whether replacing it or adjusting something else would help. I'm using a desktop PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and an Endorfy Fera 5-style tower cooler.
2 Answers
For a desktop PC, 85°C during gaming is usually within a normal range. If the temperature has gradually increased, the cooler may need cleaning or reseating, and replacing very old thermal paste could help, but paste doesn’t automatically need changing on a fixed schedule. After 3–4 years it’s reasonable to inspect it, especially if the cooler mounting is loose or the heatsink is dusty. Make sure the fans and heatsink are clean before assuming the paste is the main problem.
Around 85°C generally isn’t dangerous for a gaming GPU, although the repeated fan ramping can definitely be annoying. Also, the RTX 2070 is your graphics card rather than your CPU, so it would help to check and report the actual CPU model too. The fan curve may simply be reacting too aggressively to short temperature spikes; adjusting the curve or adding a little hysteresis in your GPU or motherboard software could make the speed changes smoother.
Got it—I mistakenly called the graphics card the CPU. I’ll check the actual processor model and look at the fan-curve settings.
Thanks. I’ll clean the system and check the cooler mounting first, then replace the paste if it looks dried out or the temperatures remain high.