Your gaming laptop is not performing well.
Your gaming laptop is not performing well.
Hi there, for the last few months my gaming laptop, an Amazon refurbished Asus TUF Dash F15, with an i7-11370H, 6gb 3060, and 24 gb of ram (mismatched unfortunately), and 1.5tb ssd a tb or which I've installed myself, and no history of damage in my hands, has been massively underperforming and I was wondering if the intelligent people of reddit could help me. The problems i think started a few months ago I believe when i opened up my laptop to clean my laptop and install a heatsink on to my aftermarket SSD (which I had failed to do for a month.) since then it feel like my performance has been dropping. where I used to get 50-60 fps in Hogwarts Legacy I now get 25-30, where I used to get 70fps in Just Cause 3 I now get 30-40. I have since cleaned the laptop and my frames improved by 5-10, and I've tried every trick I've found on the internet, I've forced my power settings onto high-performance, I have at least 50gb free on my OS drive, and 240gb on my D drive. I've monitored my temps pretty closely, and they seem to sit at around 70-80c while gaming, I know for a fact they used to spike to 90c before my performance drop started happening. as I sit writing this I've just noticed what seem to be hairline cracks around my WASD keys, but this could just be from chassis flex not temp? bc that spot isn't near any vents. Can someone help I'm getting kinda worried at this point. Thanks! Upvote 0 Downvote 1 comments Share
I would set up HWinfo64 to track GPU power usage, focusing on wattage to verify it matches the RTX 3060's rated TDP. If you notice significant heat generation, it probably points to a software problem rather than a thermal issue.
Consider removing the heatsink you previously installed. Laptops are designed with thermal efficiency from the start, so adding one is unnecessary—especially for an M.2 SSD. Try eliminating it and observe if the problems resolve. It's likely the heatsink is contributing to overheating elsewhere, possibly affecting the drive or another component beyond the GPU or CPU. You can use Crystaldiskinfo to monitor SSD temperatures and HWinfo64 to check sensor readings.
I would have installed the heatsink for another reason—it was because my laptop would suddenly freeze for a few seconds while temperatures spiked, which I attributed to the aftermarket M.2 overheating. Once the heatsink was added, the issue resolved. A friend with a comparable laptop (Asus A17) experienced the same micro-freezing problem and had it fix by using a heatsink.
I've found my temperatures are significantly lower than expected. I'm planning to have this puppy thoroughly cleaned and see how that affects things, thank you for all the advice!