13 R3, FPS drops while gaming

Question

I have an Alienware 13 r3 with a 7700HQ and a GTX 1060 6gb, it originally came with 8gb of RAM and 256gb of ssd storage. I upgraded the 8gb to 16gb and bought another 256gb nvme stick. The purchased 1 year warranty expired on May 1, 2018. I am running Windows 10 2004, I have had problems with reinstalling windows on this machine and I thought I may have a corrupt installation so I just wiped it and installed a clean image with media creation tool. But the problem still persists. The current installation of Windows only has MS Office, Norton Antivirus, Brave browser and Modern Warfare 2019 which I am using to test this. I used to undervolt the GPU and the CPU to get better thermals (I also thought I was thermal throttling and changed the thermal paste, which did reduce temperatures but that wasn't the problem), but in this installation I'm only using XTU to undervolt the CPU .120 and left the GPU alone. The laptop does get hot, but it doesn't come close to thermal throttling temps, it usually stays bellow 90, and from what I read from HWMonitor (I think) the GPU thermal limit is higher.

The problem is that when I'm gaming, I can game for half and hour to an hour with great fps considering the GPU, in normal setting in Modern Warfare getting 70+ fps, and GTA V in ultra getting smooth fps too. But after that first hour, every 3-5 minutes I get an fps drop that lasts about 5-10 seconds and gets as low as 10 fps. After a while, and in a high paced game it gets annoying.

I had the impression that it could be my second drive (which I use to install games) since when I was gaming Intel Rapid Storage Technology had a pop up saying that the drive was at risk, but S.M.A.R.T. said everything was okay. In this current installation I have Raid0. I have monitored temps, clock speeds, pretty much everything using HWMonitor, MSI Afterburner and GPUZ and the only thing that really seems weird is that the GPU usage drops from 100% to 20% or lower.

Please help!

mattyb3 · Answer

Is the CPU or GPU getting to 90 degrees? That's way too hot for the 1060 to run without throttling and you need to get it down to 80-83 which is where the default throttle limit is. The card should stop working at 92 degrees and you'll probably get a BSOD.

felipebedoya02 · Answer

The card used to get hotter and I never got a BSOD but ever since I repasted it, it does run cooler, the GPU doesn't get hotter than 90, max being around 87. The CPU does get really hot but HWInfo says that neither of them are being limited due to their thermals. I will attach an image of the sensors and their graphs.

mattyb3 · Answer

Well you will throttle as soon as it gets over 83 degrees and the higher it goes, the worse it will get. You may want to try setting custom fan curves on HWiNFO, propping up the rear of the laptop with something (post-it pads, rubber door stops) or trying a few cooling pads.

felipebedoya02 · Answer

Thank you for your reply! I already repasted the GPU and CPU with quality thermal paste, undervolted the CPU using XTU and the GPU using MSI Afterburner. Cleaned the interior, lifted the backpanel up to get more airflow, and while the temperatures did get reduced, the fps drops are still there. What else can it be done to reduce the temperature?

felipebedoya02 · Answer

I didn't set a new fan curve, but there is a bios option for performance fans which puts them at 100% constantly. It did make a difference thermally and drop the temperatures a couple of degrees, putting both the GPU and CPU within the thermal limit boundaries, and I still experienced drops

mattyb3 · Answer

Are the fans running loud? Have you tried setting a new fan curve?

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13 R3, FPS drops while gaming

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