PC gets hot when in menus but not in space

Hi All,

Does anyone else have this issue? I'm flying around space, doing combat mission for an hour - PC handles it fine, I get to a station to claim the bounty's and I go to make a coffee, come back and I hear my PC fans whirring up.. put my hand above my PC and its getting warmer. I go to roll a smoke, come back - fans are on full and its quite hot, I launch my ship into space and the fans slow down and my PC goes back to normal. I've noticed this about 10 times now. I told my friend about it while we were learning low temperature diamond mining, after about 2 hours we headed to a station and we both had a break from the game (but stayed in the menu/getting food etc) and he said my PC is getting warmer in the menu as well. Is there some kind of issue or memory leak that is known? It hasn't overheated or crashed the game once but it just gets hotter in the menu's at a starport services.

My pc specs are GTX970, 32gb RAM DDR3, Core i7, SSD, etc.. So it is getting on abit. My friends spec's are GTX1050/i7/16gb ram. I'm using Windows 8.1/he's using 10. I could keep an eye on my internal temperatures (I have software to monitor it) and report back further if it helps.

I've played around 1400+ hours on a game called RUST. This game used to have something called a 'Memory Leak' issue on some servers where the memory would like be overused (I would see the memory usage get bigger and bigger) and cause my PC to overheat and crash the game, unless I reconnected/it was intermittent so hard to find the exact cause. I wasn't the only one who had this issue, and it turned out that if I ran a command in the console I could see how much memory was being used and you could see it go up and up, until the developers fixed the issues and further optimized it. The issue got fixed. I'm only mentioning this because it feels like a similar issue potentially.
 
Not a memory leak or any kind of bug, simply different kinds of loads.

Starports are one of the most demanding areas of the game and will generally run at much lower frame rate than any other place except the surface of a planet. Station menus are transparent and add even more load to this.

If you have any sort of frame rate cap (vsync or a set limit), the difference in load between open space and sitting in a starport can be extreme. Even without a cap artifically limiting the load of other areas, starports are demanding.
 
Thanks Morbad, so I am right in thinking stations are running lot's of tasks causing the CPU to start working out or something? or its simple an FPS issue? is there any way of improving it/can I improve an FPS limit for the menu or something? I'll have to look at vsync settings for this game.. would that effect a 144hz gaming monitor?
 
Thanks Morbad, so I am right in thinking stations are running lot's of tasks causing the CPU to start working out or something? or its simple an FPS issue? is there any way of improving it/can I improve an FPS limit for the menu or something? I'll have to look at vsync settings for this game.. would that effect a 144hz gaming monitor?

Stations just seem to be more detailed and heavily trafficked, resulting in higher CPU and especially GPU loads. Capping frame rate to anything reasonable probably won't help much as stations are already lower FPS areas and you'd mostly be taking frames from where you don't want to.

Elite: Dangerous
is one of the highest load/power consumption games I've ever seen. Many newer games that look better and run faster still don't produce as much GPU load.

You could use an overclocking tool to lower the GPU's power limiter, forcing it to throttle sooner, if the heat/noise are problematic.

You could also change some settings to reduce GPU load in stations. The menus use a lot of blur, and setting blur to 'off' in the graphics options might help, without making much look worse. Depth of field is another good option to disable.
 
I'll try changing those options and thanks for the info, I thought it strange that in a menu it would cause more CPU/GPU strain, the dev's could possibly improve it? :p I thought combat would be more intensive lol. I do find other games have in-game menu issues as well, I've played like 2k+ hours on CS:GO and that had FPS/menu issues for other people, they recently upgraded the whole in-game menu engine or something which improved it.

"Many newer games that look better and run faster still don't produce as much GPU load " Depends on the game engine behind it I guess and also how well it's been optimized.
 
I can confirm that having the game just sitting at the main menu has an increased GPU load over in-game situations, even on planets, in stations and in asteroid fields. It isn't dreadful, certainly not as bad as the old GPU load increase from running borderless (is that still a thing) - however it does exist so the OP isn't imagining things.

P.S. W7 and W10 had the same thing @NewBlacksmurf ;)
 
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Why? I've got my Windows 8.1 system customised a treat running a bunch of legacy stuff Windows 10 would struggle with (for music mainly).

Check this out...it’s very old now but I’m seeing drastic improvements from a 2 year old build in win 10

As to your custom setup...stay with it if you’re happy I just interpreted you’re now having issues was all.

@Para Handy
I wonder if my GPU is why...I used a GTX 1060 and now use RTX 2070 but I’ll take y’all results. Just hoping to help a fellow CMDR
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3f2xcy/elite_dangerous_fps_performance_test_comparison/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
 
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.............
@Para Handy
I wonder if my GPU is why...I used a GTX 1060 and now use RTX 2070 but I’ll take y’all results.........

Yeah, no worries. Still running a GTX 1070 8Gb here - graphics card fan doesn't run or pulses when playing the game but in main menu for example the GPU temp goes over 55°C so the fan runs about 20% or so. Can't hear it so not an issue. If I let the fps run free (many hundreds) so as to reduce body surface features scan time when out exploring - then I can tell it is heating my toes. ;)
 
Why? I've got my Windows 8.1 system customised a treat running a bunch of legacy stuff Windows 10 would struggle with (for music mainly).
if you use ASIO for audio, Win10 is better as far as I can tell with latency.
I can use anything legacy or otherwise NP. Frooty Loops to Reason 11, IK Multimedia, Akai VIP to ProTools in Win10 64
 
I'll try changing those options and thanks for the info, I thought it strange that in a menu it would cause more CPU/GPU strain, the dev's could possibly improve it? :p I thought combat would be more intensive lol. I do find other games have in-game menu issues as well, I've played like 2k+ hours on CS:GO and that had FPS/menu issues for other people, they recently upgraded the whole in-game menu engine or something which improved it.

"Many newer games that look better and run faster still don't produce as much GPU load " Depends on the game engine behind it I guess and also how well it's been optimized.
Its the amount of dynamic details in-station I believe.
 
Get windows 10

Wouldn't change anything relevant to Elite: Dangerous, unless one uses a WMR headset.

Game gets the same performance, will produce the same heat, and runs just as stably in Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 oe Windows 8.1/Server 2012 as it does in newer OSes, drivers permitting.

Check this out...it’s very old now but I’m seeing drastic improvements from a 2 year old build in win 10

Then something was wrong with your old configuration.

at space being roughly -270 deg I would have thought so too ;)

Most of our PCs would overheat themselves in seconds in space.

Ambient temperature may be very low, but with no air to carry away heat, that doesn't matter much.

if you use ASIO for audio, Win10 is better as far as I can tell with latency.
I can use anything legacy or otherwise NP. Frooty Loops to Reason 11, IK Multimedia, Akai VIP to ProTools in Win10 64

I believe it, but there is no issue mentioned in this thread that switching to Windows 10 would mitigate or solve.
 
. Most of our PCs would overheat themselves in seconds in space.
yea true they would have to be water cooled or something as theres no way it could radiate the heat that fast with no matter to disperse too thinking about it...…..
would have thought putting it inside a gas filled type lamp bulb and dispensing heat as all bands of light may work hmmmmm ( no wonder ufo's glow and give sunburn as a by product and drip liquid metal as the evaporated atoms break down heat sinks away!)
is it true AMD stock cpu fans can defy the laws of physics and actually be heard in space lol
 
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Here's what the different GPU loads for different areas look like on my setup, with no frame rate caps:
ctoqixb.png


If you look at the Power %, the highest portions of this graph correspond to sitting in starports and browsing the menus, with the long lowish periods open space or supercruise. More severe dips are either loading screens or alt-tabbing (if short), or the system map (longer ones). The middle load scenario at the time stamp in this image is planetary approach and a medium sized surface port...followed by another SC trip, then a starport near the end.
 
I will have to do more experimenting because it hasn't crashed the game or anything for me yet, but a couple of times where I may have been AFK for like 30Mins it got really hot, i would launch and re-dock and it would sort the problem out, almost like it was leaking memory and then it fixed it by re-docking. I don't know for sure though, thanks for all the replies at least I know i'm not going mad. I wonder what the devs have to say?

On another note i'm not a fan of the colour hud changes via a file, i'd rather see an option for that in game so it doesn't change the menus only the in-ship hud colours lol.

Edit. I added another fan in the front of my pc, removed a couple of panels and the NZXT Phantom case i have has a door I can open at the front to allow more airflow.
 
I will have to do more experimenting because it hasn't crashed the game or anything for me yet, but a couple of times where I may have been AFK for like 30Mins it got really hot, i would launch and re-dock and it would sort the problem out, almost like it was leaking memory and then it fixed it by re-docking. I don't know for sure though, thanks for all the replies at least I know i'm not going mad. I wonder what the devs have to say?

A memory leak wouldn't create extra CPU or GPU load, nor would it result in increased power consumption. Generally exactly the opposite would occur once the system started to run out of memory.

You could file a support ticket and see what they say.

On another note i'm not a fan of the colour hud changes via a file, i'd rather see an option for that in game so it doesn't change the menus only the in-ship hud colours lol.

This is something people have been asking for since before the game was released.

Is there a console for elite dangerous, where I can run a command showing the RAM usage/PING info etc?

There is not. The only in-game diagnostics/monitoring we have are the frame rate (ctrl+f) and bandwidth (ctrl+b) meters and the network status which can only be accessed when quit out to the main menu.

You'll have to use OS or third party tools to see what's going on.
 
I experience the same behavior that you described, @CelestialAeon. I'm running Windows10. It's not a lot, but the fans do ramp up. Interestingly, the effect doesn't stop if I leave to the Windows desktop (not quitting the game). Also interesting is that it's not consistent at all. This happens the minority of the time. Rarely I'll also notice the effect when I'm approaching for a landing at a planetary port (with night vision ON, and only a certain type of port, I believe*).

I normally monitor temps. I can see loads as well - maybe I'll give that a try.

* I haven't paid enough attention to it to note details with great certainty; I just let the computer do its work and game-on. :)

Happy Travels!
 
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