[Hippo]

Ok, so i was having a problem where my cpu would shut down (preventive measures, which i can respect) at about 95-97 degrees celsius. (yes, i said celsius. I thought it was a mistake too, but i checked with a murcury thermometer, and its right). So following Phreaks advice, i lifted it about 3cm off the table with some vhs tapes, and made sure all the fans were clear under the cpu itself. It helped. Its running between 71 and 88ish while playing eve. (i should note, that if i don't launch anything, it idle's at about 58...)...

So, i went to flip the laptop over, as i felt the cover to the fans was a bit loose. So i unplugged ac power, the screen dimmed, and i fixed the looseness. I righted the computer, and it was running at 57. Curious as to whether it was from the screen being dimmed, i plugged it back in, and lowered the brightness of the lcd. within 15 seconds, my heat was up to the high 80's. Shocked, i unplugged, and brightened the screen to what it would be as if it were plugged in. In under a minute, it was back down to the 50's.

I tested a few more times, and have in fact traced at least 25-30 degrees from the power supply (that big thing in the middle of it is supposed to be a dc converter, but the computer reads 'on ac power', so that's apparently moot)...


So, do any of you know why the power being drawn from the wall would up the temperature by over half, as opposed to the battery, and anything i can do about it? The battery only lasts about an hour and a half of heavy gaming, so just running on it isn't very viable... Switching is possible, but it takes a while to charge - during which it could overheat again.



Oh, and i've got this about 5 feet from a sortof broken air-conditioner (fan only, cooling don't work, replacement on the way), and a 8 inch diameter fan pointed directly towards the laptop, and its about an inch off the table...

Please help me ...

[Taristin]

My laptop is hot too... I wonder if I should unplug it and see if this happens for me too >.>

[Liberator]

Well, PSUs get hot because they are changing AC to DC and heat is the waste in that conversion.  But that is a bit excessive, how old is the laptop in question?

[Hippo]

manufactured 14 months ago, first used a year ago next tuesday...

But i can't tell if the huge inline box is a dv converter, or just a step down... it goes from 110v to 19v, but doesn't specify ac/dc...

[Bobboau]

anything inside the laptop should be dc to dc, or I would think anyway.

[Hippo]

as would I, but they always suprise me

[Rictor]

Actually, I have the same problem. I can't install WoW becuase it keeps freezing in the middle (the installer takes up between 90-100% of system resources)

My cpu (AMD 64) idles at about 49C and the computer shuts down above 56C or so. Is that normal for my specific CPU? I though AMDs had a heigher heat tolerance. I just cleaned out the heatsink today (it was very dirty) and applied new thermal paste, so that should in theory make quite a difference...but it doesn't.

Granted, it's pretty hot over here, but nothing exceptional.

[ChronoReverse]

Must be a Pentium 4 Mobile laptop.  Those things are extremely hot.  Really not too much you can do about it.


Right now the Athlon 64s are simply cooler and faster.


Unless you have a Pentium M (centrino) laptop =)

[DeepSpace9er]

Its running between 71 and 88ish while playing eve.

So what alliance do you happen to be in?

[Liberator]

It's taking AC from the wall socket and converting it to DC for the laptop.  AC in a laptop = fried laptop.

If it is a full P4 and not a P4M then you'll have to get one of those fancy after market cooling platforms for it to sit on.  Antec makes one.

[CP5670]

The processor might be on a reduced speed mode on battery power, which would result in the lower temperatures. Do you have a Mobile Pentium 4 (not a P4-M)? Those run just as hot as the desktop ones, but Intel's speedstep driver cuts the speed down to around a third of their normal when on batteries and doesn't always properly push the speed back up when playing games.

Unlike desktops though, every laptop I have seen uses an external power transformer (the laptop connects to a brick that you have to take along with it, which connects to the wall outlet). If that's the case for you, I really doubt the wall connection itself has anything to do with it.

My cpu (AMD 64) idles at about 49C and the computer shuts down above 56C or so. Is that normal for my specific CPU? I though AMDs had a heigher heat tolerance.

If that's a desktop then there is definitely something wrong. 50s load temperatures are normal for the older 110nm ones and while the 90nm ones rarely get that hot, they should still be able to go to at least 60C or so.

My desktop with a 90nm one idles at 31C and goes to about 40C on maximum load. These temperatures are actually a little higher than what most people get with the same heatsink, probably due to the old engineering sample cpu I have.

[Hippo]

Its a normal P4 with HT... I haven't tried toying with the temperature by turning off HT yet though...

[Taristin]

/me has a Centrino Tablet. Pentium M 725

[Darkage]

Is the battery not getting very damn hot? had a few casses like this at work. Were the cpu got so damn hot because of a defective battery unit. Might not be the case though. Even though the battery works it might still be defective. Yes those things can break down even after a short time of usage.

[Hippo]

No, the battery doesn't get hot... It stil discharges at the same rate, and charges at the same rate as it used to... I can try recalibrating it sometime if that'd help...

[Stealth]

is the transformer one of the ones that has a cord, then the transformer, then another cord coming out of it that plugs into the laptop? (external transformer) or is it a cord straight from the wall to the laptop with no 'box' in the middle?

[Kosh]

This is why we need superconductors: No heat problem!

[Descenterace]

I've got an old Newcastle-core Athlon 3500 (I was an early adopter; the system needed an upgrade and I aimed for a fast CPU that could be further upgraded later).

It currently has a Thermalright XP-90 heatsink with a 92mm Delta fan on top of it. It idles at 37°C, rising to around 50°C is games.
I lapped the heatsink and CPU heatspreader with 2000-grit paper (not particularly well; these were my first attempts at lapping) and used a very thin layer of Arctic Silver 5, so their cooling capabilities should be about optimum. But those temperatures seem rather high.

It's an Abit mainboard, if that's any help. I've heard that the mainboard sensors usually read a higher temperature. But the air inside the case seems rather warm too... and I've got a pair of 120mm fans pushing/pulling air through the case from front to back.


Not that this matters much... I'm aiming to replace the case, CPU, mainboard and cooling system later this year.
With a Stacker, Athlon X2 4400, Abit Fatal1ty and watercooling respectively.

[CP5670]

Those temperatures seem about right actually. The 130nm models do run somewhat hotter than the 90nm ones.

How much did lapping the thing help for you? I have the same heatsink (although with a panaflo H-1BX instead) but didn't bother to do any lapping. The surface looks pretty smooth but seems to have some kind of light concentric ring texture, which I have also seen in most reviews of it. The one I got actually also had a fairly sizeable scratch on it out of the box and I was thinking of returning it for a replacement, but decided to just keep it since the scratch was near the edge and didn't touch the CPU heatspreader.

[FireCrack]

AFAIK you should NOT attempt lapping on a storebaught  heatsink, hand lapping atleast, if you had a machine do that that's okay. Lapping storebaught heatskinks by hand results in the base more-often-than-not being less flat and creating less contact area.

Now this straight from the thermalight website confirms what i said, except for one thing i didn know about, wich is that hand lapping my work on an AMD cpu if you are experienced.