Tips on reducing CPU temperature when running SL?

[Evangeline Arcadia]

I'm finding that my CPU temp goes between 70-80° consistently, (usually around 75°) when running SL (occasionally above that) I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to lower this, or is this what's to be expected running SL? I've not paid much attention to it in the past, but when I got this laptop I'd really notice the fans kicking in as soon as I get into SL.

I've already tried adjusting the various graphics settings, lowering them, to see if anything helps, but it doesn't, e.g. reducing draw distance, turning off shadows, reflections etc. , selecting Performance rather than Quality, etc.  I've used both Firestorm and LL Viewers, and have a Nvidia RTX 3080 card, and i9 core, decent RAM.   I have my laptop fans up high.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

70-80 is absolutely nothing to worry about. 🙂

Reducing your maximum framerate is a sure way to reduce the amount of work your CPU/GPU will do.

[Rachel1206]

Is the Power management mode in NVidea Control Panel set to Prefer Maximum Performance? Try and change to Normal in Manage 3D Setting for the viewer you use.

As Wulfie writes lowering maximum framerate also very efficient and  you lower the overall power consumption a lot. You really do not need like 144/165/200+ FPS in SL.

And be sure nothing hinders the air flow cooling on the laptop, dust in fans for example.

[Jackson Redstar]

cleaning the air ducts, or blowing them out. But Laptops always run a little warmer when either CPU or GPUS is being worked

[Psyche Starling]

A cooling pad changed my life! There are a variety of them out there, depending on whether you want it on your lap, on a desk, etc.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Laptops are built to be thin, compact and portable and don't have the wide open ventilation vents/grilles that a desktop computer has. Having temperatures of 70-80 centigrade in a laptop is fairly normal and not that concerning.

But if it does concern you, a laptop cooling pad (basically a sloped undertray ramp thingy with fans in it) might help a bit. Or if you're cheap, angle your desktop with some household objects and aim a desktop/office fan at the laptops underside.

Edited September 16, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[AmeliaJ08]

Laptop?

70-80c is entirely normal in a modern laptop and nothing to worry about really, on most you will start to see heavy thermal throttling somewhere in the upper 80s/lower 90s, some are even higher though.

If you do want to keep temperatures low though with laptops it is abolutely critical to given them a clean internally every 6 months or so, more if you have pets in the house. They suck up dust like crazy and the very fine, small heatsinks that cool laptop chips are prone to blocking. They tend to run at the absolute edge of thermal design too so an even aslightly blocked heatsink will result in earlier throttling.

It's easy to clean most of them these days, if you're remotely comfortable working on computers you should be able to figure it out. If not then any repair place will do it for a small fee, ideally you dismount the heatsink assembly and blow it out too. Repasting also often helps especially if it has never been done.

As a stop-gap method though you can limit your CPU from boosting to higher frequencies using a tool like Throttlestop. Sometimes knocking down the boost levels by 100-300MHz can help throttling issues, there's undervolting too but that's a more complicated topic.

It is worth pointing out that high performance laptops are absolutely not intended to be used for intensive tasks (like SL) on a lap, they get too hot especially ones with aluminium cases.

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Evangeline Arcadia]

3 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

Is the Power management mode in NVidea Control Panel set to Prefer Maximum Performance? Try and change to Normal in Manage 3D Setting for the viewer you use.

As Wulfie writes lowering maximum framerate also very efficient and  you lower the overall power consumption a lot. You really do not need like 144/165/200+ FPS in SL.

And be sure nothing hinders the air flow cooling on the laptop, dust in fans for example.

Thanks, yes it's set to Normal. I hadn't lowered the framerate, so I'll try that too. Fans have been recently cleaned:)

[AmeliaJ08]

3 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

Is the Power management mode in NVidea Control Panel set to Prefer Maximum Performance? Try and change to Normal in Manage 3D Setting for the viewer you use.

As Wulfie writes lowering maximum framerate also very efficient and  you lower the overall power consumption a lot. You really do not need like 144/165/200+ FPS in SL.

And be sure nothing hinders the air flow cooling on the laptop, dust in fans for example.

A lot of laptops only have 60Hz panels too, OP's sounds pretty high spec so maybe not the case but a surprising amount have 60Hz panels so really you might as well limit to 60FPS in these machines.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

2 hours ago, BookishMelinoe said:

A cooling pad changed my life! There are a variety of them out there, depending on whether you want it on your lap, on a desk, etc.

I used to have one, but when I got a new laptop I just had better fans - maybe time to get one again....

[Evangeline Arcadia]

6 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Laptop?

70-80c is entirely normal in a modern laptop and nothing to worry about really, on most you will start to see heavy thermal throttling somewhere in the upper 80s/lower 90s, some are even higher though.

If you do want to keep temperatures low though with laptops it is abolutely critical to given them a clean internally every 6 months or so, more if you have pets in the house. They suck up dust like crazy and the very fine, small heatsinks that cool laptop chips are prone to blocking. They tend to run at the absolute edge of thermal design too so an even aslightly blocked heatsink will result in earlier throttling.

It's easy to clean most of them these days, if you're remotely comfortable working on computers you should be able to figure it out. If not then any repair place will do it for a small fee, ideally you dismount the heatsink assembly and blow it out too. Repasting also often helps especially if it has never been done.

As a stop-gap method though you can limit your CPU from boosting to higher frequencies using a tool like Throttlestop. Sometimes knocking down the boost levels by 100-300MHz can help throttling issues, there's undervolting too but that's a more complicated topic.

It is worth pointing out that high performance laptops are absolutely not intended to be used for intensive tasks (like SL) on a lap, they get too hot especially ones with aluminium cases.

 

Thank you:)

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Thanks everyone for the replies so far!:)

EDIT in case this helps anyone else - I've lowered the fps to 58 and that seems to have made a difference - CPU is running about 50-61°. The default setting was 120 something. And I'm using these settings:

There's not an appreciable difference to my inworld experience, so that's great and my CPU says thank you:)

Edited September 16, 2023 by Evangeline Arcadia
added text and screenshot

[Henri Beauchamp]

These are very, very low settings for a Core-i9 and a RTX 3080, even mobile ones... You could easily push the graphics settings between High and Ultra, and yet keep your PC running cool enough by using the frame limiter at 60fps...

[Aishagain]

On top of that remember that the next generation of viewers using the Physically Based Rendering model will have Advanced Lighting on by default so it is not really an option to run such a low quality setting.

[AmeliaJ08]

19 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

Thanks everyone for the replies so far!:)

EDIT in case this helps anyone else - I've lowered the fps to 58 and that seems to have made a difference - CPU is running about 50-61°. The default setting was 120 something. And I'm using these settings:

There's not an appreciable difference to my inworld experience, so that's great and my CPU says thank you:)

Crank those sliders! you have the ability. Get those boxes ticked now

How did you limit the FPS by the way? I tried to do it in Firestorm and found weirdly it was bugged, the number on the slider needed to be 2x - like for 60FPS i needed to set it to 120 for some reason. In the end I just limited it system wide in the Nvidia control panel to 60FPS and don't use the Firestorm limiter in the options, I just wondered if that was a bug for anyone else.

 

Edited September 17, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Rachel1206]

19 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

Thanks everyone for the replies so far!:)

 

You should be able to use the settings below without problems with your RTX 3080:

 

Adjust LOD higher to say 2.5 or 3.0, if you experience objects looking bad, this is typical older bad designed mesh. Particle count is a matter of taste, modern GPU handles it without problems even max out.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

24 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

How did you limit the FPS by the way? I tried to do it in Firestorm and found weirdly it was bugged, the number on the slider needed to be 2x - like for 60FPS i needed to set it to 120 for some reason. In the end I just limited it system wide in the Nvidia control panel to 60FPS and don't use the Firestorm limiter in the options, I just wondered if that was a bug for anyone else.

 

I didn't have any problems using the slider in Preferences. It won't set at 60 though, it had to be like 58 or 61.

Where do you set the fps in the Nvidia control panel? I can't seem to find it.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

23 minutes ago, Rachel1206 said:

You should be able to use the settings below without problems with your RTX 3080:

 

Adjust LOD higher to say 2.5 or 3.0, if you experience objects looking bad, this is typical older bad designed mesh. Particle count is a matter of taste, modern GPU handles it without problems even max out.

Now that I've sorted out the fps, probably. I'll try it out soon, but I don't tend to run at the highest settings anyway, never have. If I'm taking photos then I might up them but otherwise I'm happy running at mid levels.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

You should be able to use the settings below without problems with your RTX 3080:

 

Adjust LOD higher to say 2.5 or 3.0, if you experience objects looking bad, this is typical older bad designed mesh. Particle count is a matter of taste, modern GPU handles it without problems even max out.

I use higher than this on a 1650Ti! well, mostly. I normally run 128 draw distance and increase it as necessary if flying or whatever.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

I didn't have any problems using the slider in Preferences. It won't set at 60 though, it had to be like 58 or 61.

Where do you set the fps in the Nvidia control panel? I can't seem to find it.

Nvidia's Control Panel is this relic from the early 00's it feels like, it's genuinely hard to find things.

 

It's here though, first screen you see:

 

[Rachel1206]

8 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I use higher than this on a 1650Ti! well, mostly. I normally run 128 draw distance and increase it as necessary if flying or whatever.

I wanted to show good spin off between quality and a FPS making SL run smooth with like RTX 3XXX. I mostly run Ultra with all max out and SL looks amazing, but normally with draw distance set to 240 meters on mainland, except as you when sailing then like you 512/1024 meters or say photo of like SL20B sims.

We have the freedom to adjust to individual preferences, activities and wishes and all of us will experience individual mileage depending on OS, hardware.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Rachel1206
Spelling

[Evangeline Arcadia]

16 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Nvidia's Control Panel is this relic from the early 00's it feels like, it's genuinely hard to find things.

 

It's here though, first screen you see:

 

 

Thanks very much:)

[AmeliaJ08]

12 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

I wanted to show good spin off between quality and a FPS making SL run smooth with like RTX 3XXX. I mostly run Ultra with all max out and SL looks amazing, but normally with draw distance set to 240 meters on mainland, except as you when sailing then like you 512/1024 meters or say photo of like SL20B sims.

We have the freedom to adjust to individual preferences, activities and wishes and all of us will experience individual mileage depending on OS, hardware.

Sure but you should have ALM etc enabled on such hardware, no reason not to.

Of course soon you won't have the choice