Stormtrooper Firing Backwards: How Fixing a Fan Dropped Thermals 20 Degrees in a Gaming PC
·16 min read
My Windows gaming rig, hostname Stormtrooper, had a case fan installed backwards. Turning it around dropped GPU temps 16-18°C. Then I went looking for a CPU undervolt and found out the board doesn’t have one. Then I tried to make idle quieter and accidentally cooked the CPU 18°C hotter across every phase, including the ones with no load at all. Four thermal test runs, one Core Ultra 9 285K, and a lot of honest data.