SOLVED: CPU Fan Turning On When Watching YouTube Videos

A few weeks ago we noticed that our CPU fan was turning on whenever even a single YouTube video was being played and because we have a high end 12th generation Intel Core i7 CPU that just shouldn’t happen.

To figure out what was going on, we confirmed the CPU and GPU usage was notably increasing when a YouTube video was being played. Next we right clicked on a YouTube video and selected STATS FOR NERDS:

We were able to see that the system was not struggling and that is was using the VP09 codex to decompress the video sent to the computer from YouTube. That is Googles preferred codec and one that nearly all GPU’s (video cards, including GPU’s integrated into CPU’s) process right in the hardware.

In our case our the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 770 GPU in our Core i7-12700T should natively decode H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP9 and AV1, right on the chip. This made the CPU fan issue even more perplexing.

Then we wondered if the browser we were using was the problem… and it was. Somehow, hardware GPU acceleration had been disabled on both MS Edge and Google Chrome.

As soon as we enabled USE GRAPHICS ACCELERATION WHEN AVAILABLE, the CPU kicked up for about 2 mins, then calmed down and hasn’t been a problem since.

How To Enable Hardware GPU Acceleration In Your Browser

1. Microsoft Edge (Based on Chromium)

• Step 1: Click the three horizontal dots (…) in the top-right corner of the Edge window to open the menu
• Step 2: Select Settings from the dropdown menu
• Step 3: In the left-hand sidebar, click on System and performance
• Step 4: Under the “System” section, locate the option “Use hardware acceleration when available”
• Step 5: Ensure the toggle switch next to this option is set to On (blue)
• Step 6: If you changed the setting, Edge will typically prompt you to Restart the browser. Click the “Restart” button to apply the changes
  • Direct Shortcut (for experts): You can directly navigate to this section by typing edge://settings/system into the address bar and pressing Enter

2. Google Chrome (Based on Chromium)

• Step 1: Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top-right corner of the Chrome window to open the menu
• Step 2: Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
• Step 3: In the left-hand sidebar, click on System
• Step 4: Under the “System” section, find the option “Use hardware acceleration when available”
• Step 5: Ensure the toggle switch next to this option is set to On (blue)
• Step 6: If you changed the setting, Chrome will typically prompt you to Relaunch the browser. Click the “Relaunch” button to apply the changes
  • Direct Shortcut (for experts): You can directly navigate to this section by typing chrome://settings/system into the address bar and pressing Enter

3. Mozilla Firefox

• Step 1: Click the three horizontal lines (☰) in the top-right corner of the Firefox window to open the menu
• Step 2: Select Settings from the dropdown menu
• Step 3: In the left-hand sidebar, click on General
• Step 4: Scroll down to the “Performance” section
• Step 5: The simplest way to ensure hardware acceleration is usually to keep the checkbox “Use recommended performance settings” checked. (This setting generally enables hardware acceleration by default if your system supports it)
• Step 6: If you prefer more manual control or are troubleshooting, you can uncheck “Use recommended performance settings.” A new checkbox titled “Use hardware acceleration when available” will appear below it. Make sure this checkbox is checked
• Step 7: Firefox usually applies the change immediately, but it’s always a good practice to fully close and then re-open the browser to ensure the settings are fully loaded
  • Direct Shortcut (for experts): You can directly navigate to this section by typing about:preferences#general into the address bar and pressing Enter, then scroll to the Performance section

4. Brave Browser (Based on Chromium)

• Step 1: Click the three horizontal lines (☰) in the top-right corner of the Brave window to open the menu
• Step 2: Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
• Step 3: In the left-hand sidebar, click on System
• Step 4: Under the “System” section, find the option “Use hardware acceleration when available”
• Step 5: Ensure the toggle switch next to this option is set to On (blue)
• Step 6: If you changed the setting, Brave will typically prompt you to Relaunch the browser. Click the “Relaunch” button to apply the changes
  • Direct Shortcut (for experts): You can directly navigate to this section by typing brave://settings/system into the address bar and pressing Enter