Epic Games Launcher idle bug seems to be making Ryzen CPUs run hotter

If you have the Epic Games Launcher running in the background on your PC, there's a good chance that it's increasing the temperatures of your processor while also sending data to multiple servers. This issue was initially reported by a Reddit user, which was followed by others confirming similar findings on their own systems.

Reddit user u/Neoncarbon claimed that their AMD Ryzen 7 5800X idle temperatures were reaching over 50ºC with the Epic Games Launcher idle, with no game running. After closing it, temperatures were reduced to 37ºC. On this same thread, multiple users with AMD Ryzen processors have also posted their conclusions, with temperatures going down by as much as 20ºC after closing Epic Games app.

Following this post, HotHardware has tested and verified this using a liquid-cooled Ryzen 9 5950X. The images below show the CPU temperatures monitored by Ryzen Master software, with and without the Epic Games Launcher running. With the app running (2% CPU utilisation) the Ryzen 9 5950X sits at 58.5ºC while also spiking the CPU usage on some cores, but once the app is closed, the temperature reduces to 34.4ºC and CPU usage becomes normalised. So far, there is no evidence that this issue impacts Steam or GOG, indicating that this is an issue with the Epic Games Launcher specifically.

Image credit: HotHardware

Further tests using Glasswire, a free network monitor tool, show that the Epic Games Launcher uses 5x different processes uploading data to 22x different servers. Additionally, it was also found that “EpicWebHelper” is sending data to a certain URL: tracking-website-prod07-epic-961842049.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com. After an hour, this process uploaded 514KB of data to an unknown server, 14x more than Steam and NVIDIA GeForce Experience during the same timeframe.

Unfortunately, we are not certain what data is uploaded and if it's related to the abnormal CPU usage. Let's hope that Epic Games can clarify this situation and solve this issue in the coming days.

KitGuru says: Do you have an AMD Ryzen processor? Have you encountered this issue with the Epic Games Launcher running?

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