So I'm sure anyone reading this is aware of the overheating issue that many Satellite laptops have, and there are a couple threads on here already about it. I have a specific question, though. After taking apart the laptop and reapplying thermal paste (Arctic Silver) as well as clearing dust from the fan using compressed air, my laptop is still running at high temps (~70-73deg C for pretty much everything but my HD, according to Speed Fan.) The GPU is always what's running hottest, so I'm going out on a limb and assuming that's where the problem is. The heatsink in my laptop is attached to two things; one covered by a metal "thing" and one that housed a chip. My question is, which one of these is the GPU? I didn't go under the metal hood-type fixture. Should I have? If I did the right thing, is it just a matter of letting the computer get used to the new thermal compound? Should I have spread the thermal compound around more? I pretty much just covered the entire area the GPU sits on, allowing it to be squished by the GPU instead of manually applying it evenly (which I should have done). I will note that I've been streaming video/applications to test the renovations, and it has yet to overheat. Before, it certainly would have by now. Any answers would be much appreciated
check if heat pipe has contact with GPU heatsink. may be the cause... by the way, this temperature is when you just power up machine? or after some time on idle / heavy loaded mode? I haven't understood what you have written about cooling system but here you go: About thermal paste..... it should be ON GPU CHIP like here and not on the heatsink...... but try not to put it too much! it can cause short circuit sometimes, and in these machines use only silver thermal paste, not white... White thermal paste I'm using only for transistor -> heatsink or P3 PC's
Thanks for the response. The temperatures start at fairly normal levels, and without running anything demanding of the GPU, they don't exceed 70degC, which is fine because the computer will never overheat at that level. However, the overheats occur suddenly and without warning, so there isn't much I can do in terms of monitoring problems and such. I just have to try different solutions and everything is trial and error. Is it possible I need to replace the fan? If so, is this a good way to fix overheating? I would definitely be willing to pay money for anything that is a GUARANTEED fix, assuming it is done correctly. Also, do you know if USB-powered cooling pads are legitimately useful in preventing overheating, or are they just a way to marginally reduce the temperatures (like 1-5degC)? I used to have a cheap one, but it didn't do anything in terms of preventing overheating, mainly because the a505's primary heatsink vent is on the side of the laptop, not the bottom. For the past year or so, I've been running my laptop with a desk fan next to it, which works very well, but obviously limits portability and is a pain in the ass. Any help is appreciated once again.
there's no guaranty that it will work normally, at 70C it can occur suddenly. normal temp would be ~60C, cooling pad won't help, try not to use it in bed or somewhere where cooling vent is closed. Sorry about my optimism, but I think that it will overheat this summer if not earlier. Easiest way to forget about this prob, sell it and buy new/used without overheating problems, I'm using HP machine that is ~9 years old, GPU temp is ~40 degrees after power up, and 45C after all day use, Computer runs on win7, VRAM - 287mb, but pixel shader 2.0. I'm almost sure that your laptop has NVIDIA chip in it
It's not old, it's oldschool! The higher temp - the less effectively GPU used power is. By the way, by your theory 10 years later normal temp will be ~100C?
High power/performance GPU's have written it's treshold in bios usually around 200C, for desktop it's normal, there's very big heatsink wich balances temperature all over PCB and there's less chance that it will get damaged for notebooks, chips are working less effectively, you get higher temp in soldered pins under bga type gpu, for example in power pins, it will start heat, but as there are balls under bga, they will loose contact or sometimes even short circuit. soldering temp is ~240C minimal and they become that hot.
PCB physically can handle up to ~300C, soldering iron not soldering iron overheats. ok.. so under GPU is soldering iron, for example, what will be with house AC wires if they will be overloaded? they become hot, same with soldering iron, it becomes hot till overheating, if you reflow them with higher temperature than normal it will work again, but only for some time, you need to change soldering iron. Don't say that you know more, may be you know, but I am working with hardware today started doing funny thing from old IBM laptop GPU's, it means cube and I'm desoldering from PCB 6 GPU's
I haven't got a clue about PCB temps 300C . There was an issue with 9000 series Nvidia GPU's and it seems the problem was soldering and one fix was to put it in the oven I don't think a PCB will be very functional at 100C though will it ?
it will be functional even at 300... but electronic comonents that are on pcb wont same with xbox 360 as I remember some even tried microwave - it blows transistors. VGA hardware should function at about 150C normally, but problems will occur in soldering iron and capacitors that contains electrolit(don't know how to translate this).
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