Glossary › PC Repair › Thermal Throttling
What is Thermal Throttling?
Thermal throttling is a CPU or GPU deliberately slowing itself down when it gets too hot. It protects the chip from damage, but you feel it as a PC that starts fast and then turns sluggish.
How to recognise it
A game runs smoothly for the first few minutes and then the FPS drops and stays low. Fans run at full speed. Video exports that used to take ten minutes now take twenty. In the worst cases the PC shuts itself off without warning, which is the last line of defence after throttling has not been enough.
Common causes
Dust clogging the heatsink and fans, thermal paste that has dried out after a few years, a fan that has stopped spinning, or a case with poor airflow. Singapore’s heat makes all of these worse, and a PC kept in a closed cabinet or against a wall has less cool air to work with.
How it is fixed
A full clean, fresh thermal paste and a check that every fan is working solves most cases. If the cooler itself is too small for the processor, a better one is a modest upgrade. Throttling is worth fixing early, because a chip that runs hot for years wears out faster.