This problem started to happen recently (maybe 2 ~ 3 months ago).
When I’m playing any game slightly demanding (such as counter strike 2), my laptop will randomly start spinning its fans really fast and loudly and my fps drops from 100 to 70 ~ 60.
This only stops when I restart my laptop.
Does anybody know what might be causing it? This is my pacman -Qe | grep nvidia output:
lib32-nvidia-utils 595.58.03-1
nvidia-hook 1.5-2
nvidia-inst 24-1
nvidia-open 595.58.03-2
nvidia-settings 595.58.03-1
And here’s my fastfetch output
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: Nitro AN517-54 (V1.20)
Kernel: Linux 6.19.10-arch1-1
Uptime: 7 mins
Packages: 1401 (pacman), 23 (flatpak)
Shell: zsh 5.9
Display (AUOB39E): 1920x1080 @ 1.25x in 17", 144 Hz [Built-in]
DE: KDE Plasma 6.6.3
WM: KWin (Wayland)
WM Theme: Breeze
Theme: Breeze (Light) [Qt], Breeze [GTK2/3]
Icons: breeze [Qt], breeze [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor: breeze (24px)
Terminal: konsole 25.12.3
CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11400H (12) @ 4.50 GHz
GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile [Discrete]
GPU 2: Intel UHD Graphics @ 1.45 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: 4.92 GiB / 15.39 GiB (32%)
Swap: 0 B / 16.94 GiB (0%)
Sounds like normal thermal throttling. Give your cooling fins a blast with compressed air. That’s more likely to help than anything you can do in software.
This only stops when I restart my laptop.
Assuming that OP tried stopping the game (which, to be fair, he didn’t explicitly say that he did), that doesn’t sound normal.
Post the output of
nvidia-smiwhen the fans start to engage. Will be helpful for next steps.Edit: just some other tweaks to try and eliminate certain issues:
- Try running with just a single monitor connected
- Disable Steam Overlay
- Close Discord if running
- Add “-threads 4” to your launch options and see if that helps
As to the first step in narrowing it down…normally a fan spun up is going to be because either your CPU or GPU is hotter than normal. I’d exit the game, give it a bit, then look at your CPU and GPU temperature to see whether either is elevated as a first step. If not, then the problem is the fan running unnecessarily. If so, the problem is (assuming you stopped the game) something keeping the thing hot.
What does the temperature of your gpu and cpu say when it happens? Since it is a laptop. Temp might be an issue.
Try limiting the games FPS to 90 or 80 - that should stop your GPU from running at max FPS, which will cause thermal throttling if the heat cannot be dissipated away fast enough. It also might just be too much dust that limits the fan’s ability to remove heat, so a thorough cleaning might be the simple solution.
Are you sure it’s the GPU causing the problem and not the CPU? Check the power limits and clock speeds for both before and after it freaks out.
Likely some software issue. You could try downgrading or upgrading your drivers… upgrade the laptop’s firmware… Next guess is a hardware issue. I had fans fail. Or have a lot of dust accumulate inside of a laptop. Anyway, the two issues will be connected. Once the GPU gets too warm, it’ll spin up the fans and then start to throttle. So both issues are due to the same thing.
Check if these are installed:
nvidia-open-dkms
lib32-mesa vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon vulkan-nouveau lib32-vulkan-nouveau vulkan-intel lib32-vulkan-intel vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse libgpg-error lib32-libgpg-error alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib lib32-alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo sqlite lib32-sqlite libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libgcrypt libgcrypt lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vkd3d lib32-vkd3d gamemode lib32-gamemode
