This doesn't seem to happen for Skyrim with a ton of mods (including texture mods), but some reason, this game seems to make my pc works harder and generates a lot more heat than any other game installed on the ssd. And it seems to be at random times. (Win7 ssd)

I only post this now since it crashed hard yesterday w/o me being able to recover the boot process. Worst part was, the game locked up right as I tried to do a quicksave. I was probably 10 hrs into the game.

Though for whatever reason, it worked later on as I was trying to recover some of the files while using another OS (Win10 ssd). (I have 2 hotswap drives so I can boot up from one slot and just dock in the other to see all the files. Hence boot up Win10 ssd and plug in Win7 ssd)

NOTE: I do have a few Nexus mods installed. Here is a list below.
- Agnod Lighter (makes a Starling dungeon a bit lighter)
- Allow Fast Travel (as the name inplies, lets you use the discovered markers to fast travel)
- Bathhouse Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Beach House (player can own this home)
- Cannons 2K (HD canons, though I haven't run into any yet)
- Center of the Earth (new dungeon, not discovered yet)
- Clutter Item Breakdown (some useless stuff become useful for smelting)
- Dal Mercer Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Dear Diary (cleaner light background for all UI pages)
- Drunken Bee Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Enderal SE - Simple Wearable Lanterns (allows you to craft 3 types of wearable lanterns at the hip)
- Frostcliff Tavern Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Glittering Gold (more gold from piles; did my own edit to lower it closer to base, since I thought it was too much)
- Invisible Backpacks (as the name implies, so far it's working for all backpacks)
- Invisible Helmets (doesn't work on circlets, which is fine)
- Magelight Pro (adds 999999 secs to duration, can be toggled on/off by recasting spell)
- Museum Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Simple Wearable Lanterns (needed for compatibility for the wearable lantern mod listed above)
- Smaller Grass (reduced grass and shorter grass, lets you see bodies better)
- Soul Markers - Allow Fast Travel (compatibility mod for using fast travel mod when using soul markers)
- Starlings Leveled (Starlings now scale with player in a certain dungeon I believe, not sure if it's a global thing)
- Stronger Archery (boosts bow and arrow damage, though I only use magic and summons, so the monsters get the boost!)
- Stronger Souls (still testing to see if this is OP or not, will adjust to lower settings if it is)
- Stronger Summons (I tweaked this to base damage, since I felt it was OP; mainly use this to keep summons scaled to player)
- Summoned Until Death (keeps summons active until death pretty much; actual time is 37 days)
- Talismans for Gold (new recipe to use gold to crate talisman)
- Undercity Home (player can own this home)
- Undercity Relit (lighting mod for this area)
- Unobtrusive Candlelight Fix (this allows the Magelight to be a bit behind the player while it's floating above the player)
- White Hearth - Enderal SE (player can own this home)

I mainly installed these mods since I only wanted to play the game once. I have too games to play all of them multiple times. Unless they have multiple story paths that I want to explore or something. I've restarted the game a few times to try out and tweak some mods, so propbably played 20 or so hours.

Things I've tried so far"
- in NVidia controls, turned off Vsync
- in NVidia controls, set refesh rate to 60hz under resolutions

System specs:
- Windows 7 Pro (64) (fully updated and internet disconnected)
- i6700k (not OC'd)
- 16gb RAM
- 1080 classified EVGA GPU
is there anything else I need to list?

Any help is would be welcome, thanks.
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Edit:
- I haven't tried to played the game yet since it finally booted up. Was worried it might crash again. But wanted to put post here while I did research elsewhere also. I'm also thinking of just installing it on my Win10 ssd, but holding off til I find out why the game is generating so much heat for my pc.
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[ISSUE RESOLVED]

Since I know people like to know how things were solved, here it is. it worked for me at least.

{Note: This may only apply to Windows 7 Pro (64bit) for all I know. It's where my game is installed. It may apply to Win10 or 11, can't verify)

The issue turned out to be uncapped frame rate/refresh rate (?)

1. There is an ".ini" file in the SKSE folder that starts with SSE and has the word "tweak" in it.
2. In the file, look for anything there that has to do with frames. (most will have text explanations wth 60 to 300 range listed)
3. In my case, it was set to 240, but my monitor's native refresh is 144hz.
4. I set all min frame settings to 60 (I think all were 60 anyway).
5. I set the max frame settings to 120 (instead of 144, just to be safe).

Ran the game for approx. 6 hours and my pc no longer overworked itself and no more overheating issues. I'll play a few more hours tonight and post an update.

The full location the file for me should be something like this (though I don't recall the exact game folder name):
- C:\GOG Games\Enderal Special Edition\Data\SKSE\SSExxxxTweaks.ini

That file seems to override any other settings for the game. Hope this helps anyone having the same issues.
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EDIT:
I'll leave the original post as is, in case people wanted info on the mods and such.
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Update 1:
Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play yesterday, so nothing new to report. Will be playing tonight for sure and report back tomorrow.
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Update 2:
Played another 4+ hours and still appears stable w/o any excess heat or overworked pc components. I also up'd the shadow quality (original install settings) before I did the test. So no graphical issues either based on the original settings minus the frames change.

So to conclude, 10+ hours of gameplay w/o any issues or crashes at all. My system was quiet and all temps were below 40.
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Very helpful information, thanks for posting it here.