Even though Epic Games store has been giving away free PC games for this Holiday season, some gamers have been experiencing issues with the Epic Games Launcher client. There have been several reports that the Epic Games Launcher has been found to increase the temperature of some AMD Ryzen and Intel processors.
This is making some CPUs to run hotter even without any game running, as reported by multiple users on Reddit, and also tested and verified by Hot Hardware as well. The Epic Games Launcher appears to be continuously running some sort of relatively demanding process in the background, when the spike in CPU temp occurs.
One Reddit user @Neoncarbon noticed that his AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU idle temps dropped from 50C to 37C when he closed the Epic Games Store’s app/client. The EGL application appears to be using some CPU resources even when it is running in the background. At least that’s what is being reported right now.
Though, it should be noted that not all AMD Ryzen owners have been experiencing this issue, so it may not be widespread as reported on Reddit. But some INTEL CPU owners have also observed a similar behavior with the EGL app.
Some Ryzen CPUs may run up to 20C hotter with the EGL client, and that’s without any game running. As mentioned before, the launcher appears to increase the CPU usage on certain threads which in turn is affecting the temperature of the whole processor package.
As reported by Hot Hardware, “Anyone that has the Epic Games launcher running in the background has higher CPU temps and usage, even while idle on the desktop”.
As you can see from the screenshots posted by Hot Hardware’s testing, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU shows 34.28C temp value when the EGL app is not running (shown on left side), and the temp shoots to 56.78C value when the app is running (on right).
For what it’s worth, Hot Hardware was running a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. Even in the idle desktop mode, Hot hardware noticed that CPU temps were around 53C when the Epic Games launcher was running, and there was 2% CPU utilization from the app itself on this 16-core AMD Zen 3 processor.
Other game clients like GOG or STEAM do not seem to exhibit this same behavior, since these CPU temperature and usage spikes are not usually typical of game launchers. So what exactly is happening with the Epic Games Launcher you may ask?
As Hot Hardware reports:
“Doing some testing on another personal machine, we noticed that the Epic Games Launcher has five different processes open at one time. Out of curiosity, we opened up Glasswire, which is a free network traffic monitor. We could see that the Epic Games Launcher and associated processes were firing off data at regular intervals to over 22 different servers.
This was happening whether we had the launcher open, minimized, or in the background. The larger spikes shown in the Glasswire graph below are from when we reopened the Epic Games launcher after closing it.”
Currently there is no fix for this issue, but there is one workaround. You can try to link Epic Games Launcher to the GOG Galaxy client, which has a built-in feature to automatically close ‘original’ launchers after the game is shut down, as pointed out by Videocardz.
It has also been reported that the Epic Games Launcher/EGL is sending 14x more as much data as Steam and NVIDIA Geforce Experience, while working in the background during the same timeframe.
It has been discovered that the “EpicWebHelper” seems to send some data to the following URL/server, though it remains to be seen whether this data collection behavior is indeed the cause of the high CPU usage/temp issue which is being reported:
“tracking-website-prod07-epic-961842049.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com”
If you are also experiencing a similar high CPU usage/temp behavior with the EGL app, then kindly leave your findings in the comment section below.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
UPDATE:
Epic Games has admitted that this was indeed a bug with the launcher, and a fix is coming soon. The EGL/EPIC games Launcher app patch notes will be updated when this fix gets implemented.
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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If you’re running Epic and the Store is load, which is animated, yes it will run some CPU processes. If you’re on the Library page, it cuts that in half (no animations). And, this continues after you close the window. So it seems that whatever you’re doing when you close the window just doesn’t “park”. Or at least that is my low level observation.
truth. When my steam is open I always make sure to leave it in library mode to avoid videos/animations playing
Yeah, seems like thats the cause. bad utilization.
Sending data to Winnie the Pooh
“We could see that the Epic Games Launcher and associated processes were firing off data at regular intervals to over 22 different servers.”
Timmy Tencent sending your data to the Chinese Communist Party.
Kinda obvious, since nothing is free these days.
There have been readers here saying all along that EPIC was mining data and sending it all over the net. It looks like there is some proof of that now. Unusual CPU usage even when you’re not running a game. Sending data to 22 servers. Sending 14 times more data than Steam does.
malware
“Epic… is sending 14x more as much data as Steam”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c50e1cf82dc9f2762bae0bf77b7769dab2a4decb577d4933fbdf485b5909b52.jpg
And this bothers me since GOG decided to partner up with them
Good thing my CPU will never have to deal with that bloatware known as a Store launcher.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/131e9af03fb85a84dca628022d3691362dcb65589422b4ef2fbccba29527e2ef.jpg
Bugs “the” Bunny ! 😀
HAHa, Metal you killed on that one. ???
epic spyfraud on it again!
this store is pure s-h*-t but ehyyyy free games111!111 LOL
Tim Sweeney is tactfully extracting personal and other sensitive data from End user computers, and sending it to that URL/server ! .
My guess is they are using the app as a CPU mining botnet and can so afford to offer the free games.
Here comes the EPIC CPU Temp values ! lol. yeah… it consumes 25% of 1 core.
which is ridiculous.
Haha, that would be a great free Xmas gift.
people act like epic is the only app/program sending your data. Hell anything that you use basically states this in an agreement when you start using it. I can only imagine how bad windows 10 is. The thing is free!! I have woken up to new programs installed. Guarantee windows is a hardcore spy program. What are you going to do about it tho? whatever. By now all your info has been used/taken in countless programs so what difference does it make. I find it really annoying/f#gged when windows self installs programs
Windows 10 isn’t free. But I do agree to some extent. I feel like whenever these companies provide an option to allow or prevent them from sending out your information to these so-called “advertisers” or whoever they label them as, it literally makes no difference on your end because you truly don’t know how they’re handling your data.
The only thing I just don’t understand is what are the actual repercussions of companies selling our data to external interests. Something I gotta look into unless somebody can explain it in layman’s term.
I feel the information people post is more damaging to themselves then the information any company gathers from a launcher/operating system anyways. People will gladly talk about their lifes, stealing/piracy, post pics of where they are going. Anybody following anyone can gather more info then any game launcher really.
May as well plug off the internet and end up with a PC without any net connection…which turns it into a glorify calculator in our days…or i can just choose to not install that crap.
I know this day one.
But there are still F4gas out there who say : its a good platform or its better than steam……
I will never install this china spyware on my computer.
Same here man!
This is what a fool looks like, who thinks he isn’t already being spied on. ??
This is what a fool looks like, who thinks he isn’t already being spied on. ??
Look chyna does indeed make a lot of things, some you can’t avoid, in this case you can NOT use that pos store, thats the fix.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e957e88ed6bf67b03f54cd642e11859dcae1360fcf5d137164c00fe3cd6d4a9.jpg
Yeah, i can confirm that, its eats about 3-5% of CPU resources even in the background. My normal temp of CPU while idle hover around 34-35 C (air cooled Ryen 5 2600), shoot up to 42-45 when EGS client run in the background or being minimize
yes, I’ve always installing NVIDIA Driver with NVInstaller form TechPowerUP to avoid installing telemetry and other bloat.
Well, Epic Games Launcher seems to use from 12% to 16% of my i5-4690K on idle. Steam client only takes less than 1% of the same CPU when idling.
Still no proof of any egregious activity going on, but how quickly the sheeple like to jump on the bandwagon. Delete Windows and throw away your phones if you feel this is a reason you shouldn’t use EGS. Do it now, or shutup.
The EPIC Launcher is not only data-mining its users but it demonstrates very strange behavior.
After it last November “update” it refused to launch in many PCs, claiming that “there was no supported video card”. Epic refused or did not care to fix this and the only roundabout was to add some code to the shortcut target.
EGS is a dumpster fire for sure…
Where are the f*cking leeches ?? To defend their Epic/Tencent pile of trash? I don’t see them in the comments.