The VALORANT Vanguard anti-cheat system has been causing a lot of problems, but most of these issues have been minor inconveniences. Now, one Reddit user has reported that Vanguard has almost cooked his graphics card.
"I just spent the last 3 hours figuring out why I couldn't get into Windows because my keyboard and mouse wouldn't work," /u/Hugometeo said in a Reddit submission to /r/VALORANT. "Just before that, I started smelling hot plastic - my graphics card was running +90°C because again, Vanguard disabled my cooling software."
90°C can be pretty hot as far as graphics cards go. Your average graphics card running under load will range from 60–85°C according to EVGA. Higher-end cards have a ceiling of 95°C-105°C; exceeding a pre-programmed point will cause the card to shut down to keep it from overheating. EVGA considers anything over 90°C to be overheating.
The Redditor concedes that his case gets very poor airflow, but the cooling software appears to have kept things in check — until the VALORANT Vanguard anti-cheat reportedly disabled it.
What makes this worse is that the cooling software was shut down without any sort of notification. This could have proved disastrous, and that's why he suggests that it should notify you when a program is being closed and that it also shouldn't allow you to start the game if any conflicting software is already running.
How Do I Disable the VALORANT Vanguard Anti-Cheat?
If you're worried about potential problems arising from the Vanguard Anti-Cheat, you should know that you can disable it. However, you will be unable to play VALORANT as a consequence, so you should only do this after you've uninstalled the game.
According to a VALORANT Support page, users can temporarily disable Vanguard by right-clicking on the associated icon in the System Tray. If you want to get rid of it for good, you're going to have to go to "Add or remove programs" in Windows, find "Riot Vanguard", and remove it from there. If you want to play VALORANT again you'll have to reinstall it.
These VALORANT Vanguard anti-cheat problems sure are troublesome. Hopefully, Riot Games will be able to get them sorted out sooner rather than later.
Have you had problems with VALORANT's anti-cheat or has it been smooth sailing for you? What do you think of the game overall? Let us know in the comments below!
