I recently ran into an issue with the quality of my gameplay that I never had a problem with before. I decided to re-download The Division so I can play in the "global event" and earn perks towards The Division 2. Shortly after playing I started noticing items and textures loading way too slow. Menu items like weapons and gear would go missing, sometimes failing to load at all until you give up waiting and try coming back to it later.
So after scouring The Division subreddit and finding out that it either came down to server issues after recent updates, or it was my system being "bottlenecked", I decided to take matters into my own hands and give my system a proper cleaning and upgrade.
I pulled out my 5 year-old CPU heatsync and fan, which was a Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B, and replaced it with a Corsair Hydro Series H50. The Zalman was advertised as a "long life bearing fan", and while I am not disappointed in its performance over the 5 years of ownership, I'm not entirely sure 5 years qualifies as being "long life". I did notice (and recently pointed this observation out to my wife ( @reptimom88 )) that the fan in between the heatsync of the Zalman began to make some rattling noises. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but I would suspect it began within the year.
Since swapping the old in with the new and giving the ole' PC a decent cleaning, I decided to try doing something I had never done before; overclocking the CPU. Sure enough after some minor trial and error, I managed to overclock my ole' Core i5-3750K processor from 3.8Ghz to 4.0 with no issues, and believe me, that doesn't seem like much right off the bat, but when I loaded The Division and started sprinting down the street at optimal graphics settings with no hiccups, I almost cried.
So, hopefully this holds up until I build a new rig in the short future. And hopefully this fixes the "dropped frames" issue we've been having in OBS. But with that I shall say it was a successful upgrade to our #streamlife!
I wish for many upgrades in your #streamlife sooner than later.