CPU Overheating

[Adunir]

When I am trying to play the Banner Saga, I will get system warnings that my CPU is starting to overheat.

OS
Windows 7 64-bit

CPU
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight Core Processor

MB
Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0

Other
32Gb Corsair RAM
AMD Radeon HD7970
More fans than you can shake a big stick at, with fan controls updated from Silent (works for everything else) to Turbo. I've even taken the system apart to get every bit of dust out of there & verified that all the fans are working, that the airways are clear & that there are no conflicts between air input & output.

That's way beyond recommended specifications for the game & I've never had an issue with any other game/application (Total War: Rome II, Civ V, Warframe, Batman Arkham Origins, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, etc), yet within about 5 minutes of playing the Banner Saga, the CPU temperature will reach 65 degrees C (when the ASUS AI Suite II tools will start with the warnings). This seems to happen when in a fight, though whether that is something to do with the fight itself, or just that within about 5 minutes of playing, I tend to be in a fight, I am not certain.

I have updated every driver on the system, from RAID drivers to motherboard drivers, graphics to network, but without making any difference. I am not over-clocking on any part of the system.

Other programs running at the time;
Steam (my access to the Banner Saga)
AVAST! Anti-virus
ASUS AI Suite II (system monitoring tools)
AMD Catalyst Control Centre (graphics tools)
Razer Advance Driver Control (mouse)

I am not having problems at any other time & shouldn't have any problems with running The Banner Saga, yet I do. Any ideas, because as far as I can tell, I have eliminated every possible problem from my specific system, so the only thing left that I can think of is something to do with the game itself?

[Aleonymous]

Wow, really? That's strange.

Your systems seems like a veritable monster, compared to mine. I am on a [Win7x65, Intel Core2Duo @2.33GHz, 4GB RAM, ATI HD4850@1GB] system and having no issues. I mean, the game is remarkably heavy on resources (taking into account that its a 2D game), but I didn't have any dramatic problems. To put things in perspective, it stresses my PC just a little more than Skyrim @ High-Settings does.

[Rensei]

Banner Saga is running on flash, so it's closer to watching super HD Youtube video than playing the latest Crysis on ultra. As far as I can tell flash doesn't eat up whatever resources it gets, with Your spec, the machine shouldn't be even sweating.

On one hand 65C isn't anywhere near overheating, on the other it didn't get that far with more GPU and CPU heavy games, then it by no means should with Saga.

Really strange.

[LearningTheCurve]

After just five minutes? I'm still on Windows XP myself but I've read that Win 7 sometimes restricts the admin access of the default user to keep users out of trouble nowadays. I know sometimes games will cause your security software to constantly monitor a game while it runs.

I would try making sure the game folder has whatever admin rights/permissions needed - use the right click and run as administrator option, also make sure whatever security software - Windows or Avast! -- trusts all the game files, and I would mess with the compatibility options. There is a compatibility mode which runs as Win XP service pack 3, which from my understanding might also alleviate problems you may have from running on a 64-bit system. Since your machine is a behemoth maybe the compatibility modes will "dumb" it down a bit.

There -seems- to be a memory leak issue over prolonged play use of the game. Adobe flash and other Adobe products tend to have memory leak style issues (or just crashes) on certain systems. Perhaps your particular machine exacerbates the flaws in Adobe's programming. This is likely what is happening, I think the folks at Adobe utterly lost control of the behemoth of programming they created years ago and I personally can't wait for competitors to put them out of business.

personally I might turn the alarms off and just close the game and then re-open it after every couple battles. That is what I myself am doing to keep the game from slowing and crashing. And like I said mess with compatibility and application trust with Avast! , just to have something to toy with.

Besides all the warnings the game will run right?

[netnazgul]

Looks like there is a performance leak somewhere in the game, so you'd better send logs to help@stoictudio.com (or support@stoicstudio.com, can't remember it clearly; maybe even better to write directly to john@stoicstudio.com).

[gotthammer]

hehehe. I got similar heat notices, too. (Intel i7-2600k 3.4 GHz; stock fan, tho', but in a big CM HAF-X case. It's pretty cool, here, too, at the moment)

Only other games that give me heat notices are stuff like Battlefield 3 and 4, and stuff like that.

[Alfy]

Got the same problem here. My Mac is not a beast, but still above specs: i7 2,7GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT650 1GB. When I run Banner Saga, the computer goes crazy hot in a matter of minutes, no matter what's on screen. As a result, I don't actually dare to play for any length of time. I really hope a future patch will address this...

[dmastri]

This is a hardware problem on your end. Software should not make your CPU overheat, ever. If your CPU can't be stressed to 100% load without throwing heat warnings something is wrong. Also though... I don't see how this game could push your CPU load that high. It simply isn't that processor intensive.

I recommend using Prime95 to test your system stability and temps. You should be able to leave this running overnight no problem. If the system overheated or otherwise crashes then you have yourself a verified hardware problem.

[Esett]

I have the exact same system OP has.
65 C seems to be the running temp for FX 8350. Despite a monster fan and decent airflow it gets that hot.

Otherwise my system is really very stable. I have played intensive games and ran prime 95 and uniengine for stability issues and despite sometimes reaching 70 C for my processor and 75 C for my video card (keep in mind that i have a 400 mhz overclock on my 8350 and a 270 mhz oveclock on my video card) the system stayed completly stable. It's just the warnings from the motherboard which you can turn off from the little icon near the temp indicator in the software.

These temperatures are normal i guess. Anyway i have a 3 year warranty for all my components so i don't care if any fail which i doubt they will.

[Smoker]

Game overheated and shut my computer down in the first area.. after that it was smooth.

[Harmoniker]

Same problem here with MacBook Pro. The MacBook runs very hot after a short time of playing. The fan makes a loud noise as I've never heard in 3 years of using this computer! Slowly it scares me to play the game....

It will not be long and someone has a hardware damage...

[Alfy]

Has anyone ever found a solution to this issue?

I had submitted a ticket to the devs, but after a couple of exchanges (on the lines of: "ouch, we'll look into his!"), they simply stopped getting back to me. I send a copy of the emails - and eventual lack thereof - to the retailer, and ended up getting a refund, so I guess no harm done, albeit not thanks to the devs.

Still, I'm curious if a patch solved the whole thing or if other people affected just never got to play the game...

[RossHunt]

Hi,

I am also suffer with same problem computer overheating. Thanks for giving a suitable solution for my problem. I suffer with this problem from many days.

[jamiebatty]

Your computer has excellent features, so I don’t think this is because of the Saga. Perhaps some other programs use too much RAM (although in your case it is more than enough), or there is simply some kind of restriction on overclocking.