I am having a similar problem. I've got eight hundred ish hours in the game. I haven't played it much of late, waiting for my girl to have some time. But I saw a seed on reddit I wanted to check out. Since I obtained the game in February of this year, my pc specs have been as such. Core i5 3570k at stock clock, GTX 980 4GB, 16 GB old ram, 7200 RPM HDD. When I installed it, I've had the resolution at 2560x1440 (native monitor resolution, fps is capped by the monitor at 60fps) most settings maxed, I've had about half the buttoned options off with no frame limit, and have had no graphical issues or GPU problems.

With the latest update, I've only gone to the new seed, zero building done. I heard a fan spin way the hell up, and opened MSI Afterburner. At 2560x1440 the GPU temp pegged on open, and anytime the game was rendering. The automatic fan curve pegged at 98%. But watching the fan RPM, 98% fan setting is roughly 4k RPM. And then every 30 to 45 seconds, for about 5 seconds the fan would spike to 6.5k RPM. I updated the nVidia drivers, same issue. Turned all the button options off, problem remained. Lowered the sliders to medium and then low, the problem remained. Dropped the resolution to 1980x1440, temp seemed to drop a little. Lowerd to 1980X1080 and the fan speed automatically dropped to 74 % and the temps dropped from 93 to 81 C or so.

I play other, older titles at 2560x1440 and in World of Warships average 72-76 fps with settings maxed. Haven't heard the fan wind up like this on any other game. Currently running GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 512.15 released on 3/22/2022.