Set a sane fan curve
Also searched as: fan curve · fan curve setup · cooling · stop thermal throttling · custom fan curve
The goal
Keep parts cool enough to hold their boost clocks — the safest performance change there is, since modern chips run faster when cooler.
Steps
- Use your vendor's software for fan control — your motherboard's tuning app for case and CPU fans, your graphics card's app for the GPU fan.
- Aim for a gentle ramp: quiet at idle, climbing steadily as temperature rises, full speed only when genuinely hot.
- Avoid fans that slam between off and full — that on-off cycling is noisy and does nothing good.
- Run a game for a while and check that temperatures settle rather than climbing into throttle territory.
To undo
Set the fan control back to Default or Auto in the same vendor app, and the stock curve returns.
The Compy Blackbook holds 174 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.
See Compy →