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Geek Culture / Hardware Temperatures and Cooling

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Seppuku Arts
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Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 10th Dec 2012 11:06 Edited at: 10th Dec 2012 11:09
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Hey folks, recently I managed to get my gaming laptop repaired and found that the cause of death was my graphics card overheating and buggering the motherboard. Naturally I want to avoid this happening again and ideally I'd still like to play games on it. I've tried some already, but I get 5 to 10 minutes of game play before I get slowdowns.

However, I am not sure what temperatures are healthy and what aren't. So here's my reading:



I assume 65c isn't good.

This is from having played SW:TOR for a little while and then Windows closed the game, probably to save damaging itself.


What would folks recommend? I have done a bit of searching myself, it seems like a common issue with gaming laptops, I figure a cooling pad like this one would perhaps do justice.

Or is there more I can do to combat this issue? I had a cooling pad before and it didn't work, but to be fair it was a cheapy, which ironically died on me from overheating. :/ Still, despite its apparent crappiness, it does make me wary about forking out for a new one.

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Indicium
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Posted: 10th Dec 2012 13:08
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Have you considered opening the casing to clean out dust from the fans and heatsinks?


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 10th Dec 2012 16:53 Edited at: 10th Dec 2012 16:54
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The repair folks did that. I literally picked it up Saturday, so I'd be very worried if I collected excessive dust in such a short time space.

The reason I think it overheats is due to a manufacturing fault. I remember reading up on a few issues a couple of years back, NVidia had some faulty mobile cards, originally it was 8400M's and 8600M's, but I read up of cases of 9500M's going wrong as well, even specific to my laptop model. Interestingly I had the same symptoms before the big failure, battery losing its life, high temperatures, BSOD's, heck even 2gb of my RAM disappeared. Seems it's all related to the card not being able to stay cool enough during anything graphics intensive - so I think the main solution will be trying to keep it as cool as a hip Jazzster (not to be confused with Jazzy Hipsters).

Only method I am looking at the moment is that cooling pad. But if there's other tricks, it'd be handy so I can be a happy gamer.

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Melancholic
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Posted: 10th Dec 2012 18:22
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Quote: "I assume 65c isn't good."


For a laptop it really isn't that bad at all, i used to have a 8600m that would peak around 85, hell even my gtx 460 i currently use tops out at around 70 and its a desktop card with a giant heat sink on it.

Quote: "then Windows closed the game, probably to save damaging itself. "


I'm pretty sure (not completely though) that windows would not selectively close programs when dealing with heat, that would be down to the MB/BIOS to interfere with. You might want to look elsewhere for the source of this problem , what version of windows are you running?


I can count to banana...
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 10th Dec 2012 19:10
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Running Windows 8 Pro, but got a partition with Windows Vista (which was originally installed), so I could prolly try running a game on Vista as well, though I find Vista's performance to be horrendous. The closing only happened on SW:TOR, so it may be a SW:TOR issue that caused it to close, or Windows 8 has introduced features we don't yet know about *shrugs*. But I am not looking to try and stress the computer too much.

I still suspect the heat is still an issue, it was definitely one before, it was enough to knacker the motherboard. However, I don't understand why framerates in games would be perfect and then after a certain number of minutes, slow down. The only exception so far has been Neverwinter Nights, but it's not really graphics intensive anymore.

Unfortunately my level of geekiness resides with the usage of computers but my hardware knowledge needs touching up on. Maybe there's an alternative explanation I'm missing? (I thought drivers as a possibility, updated them, same issue).

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MrValentine
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Posted: 11th Dec 2012 07:15
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Try PCMark, it should help identify where the slow downs are occurring... just a thought

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Phaelax
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Posted: 11th Dec 2012 15:50
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Temps look fine to me. And your CPU temp looks lower than I'd expect in a laptop.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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Melancholic
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Posted: 11th Dec 2012 17:28
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Try install MSI after burner, open it and run a game until slow down occurs, then look at the graphs it made, it will show temperature, core clock, shader clock and memory usage and some other stuff, from there if there's any obvious trend (such as memory usage going to 100%) you've found your problem. Apart from the aforementioned memory usage going to 100% its possible that your GPU is down clocking itself for some reason


I can count to banana...
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 00:33 Edited at: 9th Jan 2013 00:34
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Been a month I know, but tested different games now, Crysis seemed to run okay on mid settings, though I think it actually performed better before the repair. Looking at the MSI settings, it seems that it may be underclocking itself and MSI doesn't seem to make a different if I increase the speeds:

Memory Clock seems to only be 200 and core clock 297, even though it's set to 400 and 475 by default. I can't seem to improve my speeds, let along overclock. Also, the shader clock is too low, it's 594 and according to NVidia's site it should be 700.

If MSI isn't letting me increase my clock speeds, any advice?

I might go as far as replacing the card if it works out cheap enough, though I know it's not easy to do. Though only if I think it's damaged, it ran hot enough to damage my motherboard, so I don't know if its managed to knacker it.

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MrValentine
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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 00:43
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The low frequencies may be manufacturer designed...

Possibly for cooling purposes... if it is working... I would not push it too much... as it is not a Desktop unit...

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 00:55
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After having done some research, the default clock speeds people are registering on the same model laptop match those listed on nVidia's site for this card. So I think it is underclocking itself rather than being a part of manufacturer design. I don't want to overclock it, I just want it running at normal capacity.

In terms of cooling, I've got a coolermaster cooling pad (the one with the adjustable fans) for it and it runs nice and cool. Besides, before I'd go ahead and accept the new settings, I'd do some testing first as to avoid any accidental damage (I know over clocking bears that risk), if it gets too hot, I'll abort.

Though going for the replacement option prolly wouldn't be very economical, I just found a replacement card compatible with this model for £119 (and in stock), which is too much to spend as an additional cost on a 5 year old model.

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The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 19:52
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Do you have any power management programs installed (like Nvidia's control panel for example)? Check to make sure that it isn't stuck in some power saving mode.

MSI Afterburner also has Furmark bundled with it (click on the K) - use that to stress test and make sure that it's not going above 90 ish.

You get 500MB extra space on Dropbox... I get 500MB extra space on Dropbox

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