16 replies to this topic

[Cion]

Hi,

I have a gaming laptop under a year old, but no warranty (long story).

Anywho, it's been getting really hot lately. Hot to touch. It heats up more playing MWO, but it's warmer than normal when doing other things too.

CPUID shows CPU temp maxing at 86, GPU at 71, etc. I understand this is "ok" for my CPU and GPU (i7 and GTX 765m). I use a laptop cooler mat so my vents are not blocked at all.

Do you guys think my heatsink is failing?. Where my fan is the touch temperature is ok. On other areas of my laptop, some where the heatsink goes, it gets really hot.

I used to be able to play MWO for hours and no heat at all. Now 20 minutes and its burning.

Thanks for your input.

Cion

Edit: forgot to add, I've done a factory reset so I know it's not software related. I also took off the lower panel and cleaned out the dust.

Edited by Cion, 23 July 2014 - 05:36 PM.

[ninjitsu]

Have you blow out your fan and heatsink? You can also try applying fresh thermal compound.

[Monkey Lover]

Sounds like the fan might be the problem. Can you feel the air being pushed out of the laptop? If not you might have to pull it apart and clean it.

Might check you bios and see if you have any fan controls. You can try increasing it so it goes to 100% sooner. There are 3rd party programs that will do this too.

If you have installed any cpu monitor program or overclock programs they might have turned down or even off you cpu fan.

[Cion]

ninjitsu, on 23 July 2014 - 07:03 PM, said:

Have you blow out your fan and heatsink? You can also try applying fresh thermal compound.

I suppose that's my next step

Monkey Lover, on 23 July 2014 - 09:28 PM, said:

Sounds like the fan might be the problem. Can you feel the air being pushed out of the laptop? If not you might have to pull it apart and clean it.

Might check you bios and see if you have any fan controls. You can try increasing it so it goes to 100% sooner. There are 3rd party programs that will do this too.

If you have installed any cpu monitor program or overclock programs they might have turned down or even off you cpu fan.

I just opened it. The fan is *decently* cleaned, no horrible amounts of dust. Cleaned it a bit. I do feel air coming out.

When I opened it I noticed one of the *hot* areas is my hard disk. Not the only one, the back side and right side are super hot now for instance, fan area is pretty cool.

My Bios does not let me access the fan. I got Speed Fan as well and it does not detect it, so I can't manually adjust the fan.

thanks

BTW monkey, I saw you help some other guy with a PC build, looks like you know your stuff.

[Scifimyth]

Might check the BIOS version for your laptop. There could have been an update that may have an affect. Also try and find the temperatures of that hard drive. Any app with SMART support should read that and you can see if the drive is overheating. If the drive exceeds 50c then you are in a danger zone and need to see what you can do. It could be a failing Hard drive at this point although that isn't all that common.

[Monkey Lover]

Normal laptop hard drives only use few watts of power they should never get so hot they heat up your system . Of course a bad drive could do about anything like Scifimyth said.

From what I seen most the heat comes from the cpu and the power supply components. Might see if you have more of less heat with the cord plugged in. Maybe the inverter is going out. They are cheap on ebay 10 bucks or so.

If the cpu heatsink is not close to the heat reported by the cpu monitor. I would look at how its clamped to the board. Makes my wonder if you need to tighten it down.


It's really hard to pin point heat on your laptop because over your harddrive there might be brackets going over half your mainboard. These could use be used as heatsink on your chipset.

Does your laptop have more than one fan? Might have never noticed. Some will have a fan in the back and one over the cpu.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 23 July 2014 - 10:46 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Brand/model of Laptop. Generate/post the top half of the dxdiag, just past the sound card entries (Windows Key R, type in dxdiag, save as file, etc)

Most laptops nowadays have a Turbo Boost feature, basically a cheap mans overclocking but it is not done on all cores. Generally at max turbo boost it is only one core. This is done by increasing the GHZ and power which generates lots of heat.

For many, besides taking control of the system's fans (particularly GPU fans with Afterburner/etc) many laptop players I have interacted with either reduced or disabled Turbo Boost feature to prevent a yo-yo effect on both GHZ speeds and heat being generated.

Many found that they needed to drop it to 98% or 97% to completely disable turbo boost.

http://www.tautvidas...el-turbo-boost/

Since you have a Nvidia mobility card, make sure the Power Manage mode in the Nvidia is set to prefer best performance, then disable Ambient Occlusion.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 24 July 2014 - 07:57 AM.

[Cion]

Scifimyth, on 23 July 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

Might check the BIOS version for your laptop. There could have been an update that may have an affect. Also try and find the temperatures of that hard drive. Any app with SMART support should read that and you can see if the drive is overheating. If the drive exceeds 50c then you are in a danger zone and need to see what you can do. It could be a failing Hard drive at this point although that isn't all that common.

BIOS updated. Hard drive temperatures are around 48 C.

Monkey Lover, on 23 July 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

Normal laptop hard drives only use few watts of power they should never get so hot they heat up your system . Of course a bad drive could do about anything like Scifimyth said.

From what I seen most the heat comes from the cpu and the power supply components. Might see if you have more of less heat with the cord plugged in. Maybe the inverter is going out. They are cheap on ebay 10 bucks or so.

I looked into that and I think it's still very hot, like it doesnt cool down. Might be less hot but hard to tell (touch, thermometer stays the same).

Monkey Lover, on 23 July 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

If the cpu heatsink is not close to the heat reported by the cpu monitor. I would look at how its clamped to the board. Makes my wonder if you need to tighten it down.

I'll see if I can tighten it. Dissasembling this thing is not that easy. I'll need to take out my HD and Batterly to attempt to take off the panel over the heatsink.

Monkey Lover, on 23 July 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

It's really hard to pin point heat on your laptop because over your harddrive there might be brackets going over half your mainboard. These could use be used as heatsink on your chipset.

Does your laptop have more than one fan? Might have never noticed. Some will have a fan in the back and one over the cpu.

From what I can see taking the bottom case off, just one fan, looks like it;s over the CPU (hard to tell) and obviously the heatsink exhausts on this fan.

[Cion]

Tarl Cabot, on 24 July 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

Brand/model of Laptop. Generate/post the top half of the dxdiag, just past the sound card entries (Windows Key R, type in dxdiag, save as file, etc)

Most laptops nowadays have a Turbo Boost feature, basically a cheap mans overclocking but it is not done on all cores. Generally at max turbo boost it is only one core. This is done by increasing the GHZ and power which generates lots of heat.

For many, besides taking control of the system's fans (particularly GPU fans with Afterburner/etc) many laptop players I have interacted with either reduced or disabled Turbo Boost feature to prevent a yo-yo effect on both GHZ speeds and heat being generated.

Many found that they needed to drop it to 98% or 97% to completely disable turbo boost.

http://www.tautvidas...el-turbo-boost/

Since you have a Nvidia mobility card, make sure the Power Manage mode in the Nvidia is set to prefer best performance, then disable Ambient Occlusion.

This is a 2013 Alienware 14. Here is my DXDiag

Ambien Occlusion is off.

[Cion]

I'm an advanced user, not an expert. from what I can tell this is the layout (and increased heat) on my laptop.

https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing

Edited by Cion, 24 July 2014 - 08:24 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

I think this is your laptop. Im sorry i dont have time to watch the whole thing as im starting my 3x12 hour work week. For what i can tell the back heat is from the heatsink but the heat over the harddrive i am not sure about. There is nothing but the hard drive here. Have you tried a hhd temperature program? see if the drive is getting hot or just the area.

Looks like its going to take a half hour to retighen the heatsink, At this point you might as well put some new heatsink compound down.

There is a big risk of pulling a system apart like this. I have done it a few times and was ok but doesnt take much to break something. Seeing you have a video it should be safer just make sure you ground yourself every so often. If you have a deskstop computer touch the outside case it should be grounded. Dont work in socks on the carpet. Make a layout for all your screws when you start taking them out. Last i would buy a nice set of screw drivers with a few tip sizes so you dont strip anything.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 24 July 2014 - 02:25 PM.

[Deathsiege]

Have you tried Clan heat sinks?

[Cion]

Thanks for the video and the info, I really appreciate it.

New info, my adapter is BURNING hot.would that have anything to do with it?

[Monkey Lover]

My tablet adapter gets really hot so im not sure if its normal or not.

[ninjitsu]

Cion, on 24 July 2014 - 03:21 PM, said:

Thanks for the video and the info, I really appreciate it.

New info, my adapter is BURNING hot.would that have anything to do with it?

Pretty normal. Make sure it isn't covered by anything while you're charging.

I've opened up a lot of laptops and they can be a pain! Make sure you keep track of where the screws go. If you apply new thermal compound, I'd suggest using http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835426020 It handles higher heat better than AS5.

[Cion]

Thank you all for your help! Laptop is still hot, but at least I know what it's not.

Next options are to take the whole thing apart, apply new paste and tighten heatsink, or just buy a new heatsink.

I really appreciate it.

[SpDmnAdam]

Applying thermal paste is a good idea as its fairly cheap and easy to do just a bare for the teardown. Your laptop is quite new but I know I refreshed an 8 year old laptop with new thermal paste and it did marvels for its cooling also cleaning out the case and heatsinks does a lot.