I recently noticed that my friend's PC is making an unusual amount of noise while playing Slime Rancher 2. Concerned about the PC's health, I installed HWMonitor and found that the hotspot temperature of the RTX 3060 is hitting 104 degrees Celsius during gameplay at over 60Hz. When playing Minecraft with shaders, the temperatures are still hot, ranging from 95 to 100 degrees, along with significant coil whine. They never experienced these issues before Slime Rancher 2, and I'm worried about the high temperatures. Is this an indication that the thermal paste might be dried out? Should we consider returning the graphics card since it's still under warranty, or would it be better to undervolt it to see if that helps?
3 Answers
How's the airflow in the case? Proper airflow is essential, especially with a powerful card like that. If hot air is getting trapped due to poor airflow, it could contribute to the overheating issue. But with those temperatures, it sounds like the card itself is the main concern.
For older cards, people often try repasting or undervolting as fixes, but since your GPU is still under warranty, just send it back for a replacement. It's better to be safe than sorry, and you might save yourself future headaches.
Yeah, I'm definitely not going to repaste it since I don't want to risk voiding the warranty. I think returning it is the best option.
It sounds like you've definitely got a problem. Those temperatures are hitting the max operating limits of the card, which likely means it's thermal throttling to prevent further overheating. Since it's still under warranty, I strongly recommend returning it for an RMA—trying to fix it yourself could void the warranty and might not even solve the issue. Undervolting might help, but it won't really address the root problem and could worsen things over time.
I'm leaning towards returning it too, thanks for your advice!
The case is a Fractal Design Air RGB with good fans, but I'm worried that the CPU cooler might be blocking some airflow for the GPU.