Check your CPU Cooling and Thermal Throttling!!!

[TorqueWrench 6]

I thought I'd share my experience with tweaking my laptop to run FS2020 with reasonable performance. I have had this laptop for 2 years now and it's handled everything really well, but FS2020 is pushing it to its limits. Initial performance was really poor, with frame rates around 15-23fps @ EGBB Birmingham, with graphics set on Medium, AI Traffic dialed down to 10%, and clear skies. CPU was thermally throttling, so frame rates were all over the place.

System Spec : Asus Rog Strix Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.6GHz, 32Gb PC2133 Memory, NVidia Geforce GTX1060 GPU with 6Gb Dedicated RAM, Samsung 970 EVO 1Tb NVMe SSD, (OS & Flight Sims), 1Tb 7200rpm SATA (all other stuff). 100Mbps cable broadband.

Just sitting at the Windows Desktop, the CPU was running around 65C, very hot.

I decided it was time to check my laptop cooling, so I opened it up and vacuumed out all the dust and cruft, this was blocking the heatsink vents. I also removed the cooling fans and heat pipes etc, and re-applied Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste to the CPU, GPU, and VRM chips.

I have also disabled CPU Turbo Boost to lock the CPU at 2.6GHz under load.

This brought desktop temps down to 45C (20 degrees cooler!). Time to check FS2020.

Now I have pushed the graphics up to High End, and turned on Scattered Clouds. Wow. what a difference. I now see frame rates at a nice steady 32-35fps, and visuals look great. This is in the Cessna 172 G1000. Panning around the cockpit is nice and smooth, and I haven't seen any more stuttering. CPU temps peak around 88 degrees.

Visually, this sim is a delight, and I hope it gets better as Asobo push out patches to it.

I had previously run X-Plane, but stopped due to seeing big FPS dips every 5 seconds or so (45-50 down to 17 for a few seconds). That made X-Plane unplayable. I will have to check that out now too, and see if those FPS dips were down to thermal throttling too.

Anyway, if you're not getting the performance you expect from FS2020, it may be worth checking your system temperatures, and your cooling solution. Good luck!

[ShantSim 0]

my ryzen 7 2700x is running at 88c do you think thats why my fps is low. i just bought a liquid cooler 240mm with artic thermal paste should that help it

[TorqueWrench 6]

I don't know the thermal specs of your CPU, but if it exceeds the TDP (Thermal Design Power), it will automatically throttle the CPU clock (in my case from 2.6GHz to 1GHz!), to prevent damage.

You should find some software to monitor your temperatures while running the sim. I suggest either Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, or ThrottleStop from TechPowerUp (ThrottleStop has an option to disable TurboBoost, and lock your CPU to it's base clock, 2.6GHz in my case).

Your mileage may vary.

[ShantSim 0]

i use nzxt cam and msi afterburner. seems like my graphics card is running very high usage rtx 2070 oc and my ryzen hits the 60s usage. im going to get a liquid cooler and then over clock my cpu to 4.0ghz all cores. but i think the usage problem has to do with it being almost 90c all the time in fs2020

[JimmiG 244]

AMD specify 85C as the maximum safe temperature for the 2700X. Anything above that will shorten the life span of the CPU significantly and cause throttling. You should ideally be well below that, perhaps under 70C.

[ShantSim 0]

thanks mine is at 88c so im in trouble. just bought artic mx-4 and a aio liquid cooler 240mm so it should help