[Conference Call] Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M 78C° Throttling [SEE POST #191 and later]

That can't be right. We've denied the issue and offered no solution. What gives? We need to capture your unit.

/s

 

This is with the pads and paste that are already fitted to the new heatsink. The GPU core area appears to have some compound that is semi-hard already on it. It comes with a syringe of paste as well but the tech that put it together said it wasn't needed and could make it worse. I went with this and the results are as stated!

I'm guessing you say that with a big grin

I have to say I am a little surprised at how much better it is - far better than my expectations.
I'm thinking these cards might a bit of a crap shoot and i hit paydirt! card revision states A1 for anyone interested in this stuff

 

I used the DOS switch for sarcasm.

 

I see it now - totally old-school < VBG >

 

+rep for use of VBG.

 

I send out a parts only request email to AWCC-resoluton on March 28 and haven't heard anything back or received anything? How long does the process usually take for most of you here? I see that some have reported they received their parts or have a tech replaced it?

 

I first contacted them by email on 4/06. After some follow-up emails I received a call on the evening of 4/10, which I unfortuately could not take at the time, from a tech that wanted to do some telephone troubleshooting. I emailed back on the morning of 4/11 asking what telephone troubleshooting would be required with this known issue and known fix. I have yet to hear anything back from my email nor have I received a call-back from the tech who left me voicemail. Perhaps I will hear something today.

Update 11:30 AM EDT....
Just had a call back from the tech and they have scheduled a replacement of the heatsink and a repaste job for Monday. Replacement video cards are not yet in stock. He advised that the ultimate plan is to have replacement video cards and heatsinks to be pasted and sub-assembled and then replaced in the users machine as a unitized replacement. I suspect that will give Dell beter quality control on the paste and paste job. However, he advised that it will take some time to get parts in place to start the subassembly process and get the unitized part available to be placed in users machines. Hence, in the intirim they want to do a on-site service call and change out the heatsink and do a repaste in the hopes that will relsove the issume with my individual machine. We hope to be able to schedule that for Monday and I will report back to the group.
Regards

 

Exactly how it happened for me a couple of weeks ago. I agreed for them to replace only the heatsink on the basis that a card would follow when available. The heatsink did the job but I wanted a new card as mine had been 'cooked' by all the overheating. The card came in last week and an engineer came with another new (pre padded/pasted) heatsink as well!

I was told by dell also that the intent was for a complete kit but there is no part number for that yet.

The new heatsink is pre-pasted and padded but check it out when they install as it's put in a bag with no protective film on the pads or paste so they do get stuck on the inside of the bag and shift - saw this on both new heatsinks.

Good Luck

 

I finally got a chance to take my laptop to Bill and Louis. They were awesome! Louis replaced my heat sync and the results were immediate. My idle temps were several degrees cooler immediately. I ran one benchmark and it looked really good. I need to do a lot more testing to figure out where I'm at, though. Lots of actual work to finish before I can play, though.

Louis saw immediately that my heat sync was in a batch that had bad heat pipes. Bill snapped a picture of this and emailed it to me. I will post it as soon as I can in case any of you have bad heat pipes so you can see what to look for. Basically, if there is any discoloration of the heat pipes on your heat sync that causes them to be a different color than the other copper areas of the part, it is likely bad.

From the one benchmark I ran for ten minutes, I can tell you mine is cooling much better now. I really appreciate the guys taking time out of their day to look at my laptop personally. They are both great guys and you can tell they care a lot about the product they sell.

 

^^Good to know. I have never been through any bad heatsinks so far fingers crossed. Dell have already offered me a replacement considering how many GPUs I burn through but I'm holding off until at least the GTX 680m with 3D.

Rep to you by the way

 

Man, it was sooo simple. We're going to shoot a video of Louis doing a swap for the field service providers. We'll also be posting it elsewhere. Here for sure.

This is what I saw:
Louis removed the battery and bottom cover. Then he removed the heatsink, leaving the GPU in the MXM slot. I took the new heatsink out of the bag, careful to peel the bubble wrap bag away from the pads inside the bag. (Don't just yank the part out and re-attach the pads later.) He then cleaned the contact surface of the GPU.

This is where it got interesting. He didn't use alcohol or anything. All he did was wipe it away with a paper towel. Nothing fancy. He made a half-hearted stab at wiping away the factory excess, but gave up after about 1.5 seconds and left some there. Said it wasn't important. He verified the pads were straight, and had to re-align the skinny one. Then he removed the card, and attached it to the new heatsink. Then he showed Jody two gaps where you should be able to see a little bit of light in one and a bit more through the other. Then he put the whole shootin' match back in the MXM slot in one shot. Put the cover and battery back. Booted up the system and asked what Jody usually saw for idle temps (48-54, I believe was the answer. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jody.) We saw 34C and a happy Jody.

Now if we can only convince Jody's son to come play football for UT, I'd call it a complete success.

Edit:
I left out the part where Louis looked at the pipes on the old heatsink and immediately pointed out this was the original heatsink that had the discoloration issue requiring replacement.

 

Really now? According to Louis, what temps should we be seeing under those ambient circumstances? My 580m idles around 52 - 57C. My ambient temps are around 26C or 80F (roughly).

 

Those are fine. I idle at those temps at similar ambients sometimes cooler.

 

I'm not too worried about it, but I do wonder what it was designed to run around. It starts to heat up a bit hotter than I'd anticipate without the cooling pad, though (with rear propped up).

 

Ambient temp was about 77F or so, judging by feel. The thermostat in this building is set to 78F, and the room we were in felt a little cooler. We saw 34C idle temp about 30 seconds after boot, and it stayed there for the few minutes we watched it. I would assume you would see about the same, give or take a degree or two, at 80F. *And we had it on a soft repair mat instead of on the hard table.

 

Yeah first boot idles are nice and low the as soon as web pages start loading, temps will rise to the 50s. Good stuff Bill. Cheers

 

Thank you again for your hospitality and support, Bill. As for my offensive lineman, I have learned not to guess the inner workings of the mind of a teenager. I just feed him and take him to schools that want to take a look. I may have to start raising my own steers in the back yard soon.

The heatsink is working really well now. I am posting a picture of my heatsink for you guys. If your heat pipes are discolored like this then you have a part out of a batch that had a problem and they need replacing. The heat pipes should be the same color and as clean as the copper pads on the heatsink. Mine clearly appear corroded. My idle temps are now easily five degrees cooler now and I haven't gotten time to do any gaming at all. The tax man cometh and I must finish before I get myself in trouble!

 

Whoa...34C idle is even lower than my 460M idle!

 

Few days ago, Dell changed my gtx580m because of a wrong application between the heatsink and the graphic card.
My temps was around 76°C with 3dmark11, and now...64°C!!
The same situation as experienced MickyD1234.
Where is the "mistake"? I am really surprised that the pre applied thermal paste could change more than 10°C!

 

I just ran the same benchmark (3dmark11). My temps were 65C with a slight elevation on the back end of the laptop. Flat on the desk I now get 69C. I think those are very good temps and I'm a happy camper now.

 

You have fed him well. That is one rather large young man with a kind face, but I bet he has a nasty disposition on the field. I imagine among his peers he's not one to be trifled with.

You're welcome for the support. Louis and I are pretty big fans of our customers.

 

Update after the Monday on-site Dell Tech visit:<O</O
<O</O

The tech arrived with the new heatsink kit for the GPU. The heatsink is shipped in a polybag with a thin film of thermal paste and thermal pads attached. As the thermal pads are sticky on both sides, they adhere as well to the polybag as they do to the heatsink, so in removing the heatsink from the bag, the pads were removed from the heatsink. The tech peeled the pads off the polybag and reattached them to the heatsink. A small tube of thermal paste and an ‘X’ frame plate was also included in the kit. <O</O
<O</O

First the tech changed out the heatsink but did not use any additional paste. He did however, repaste the CPU heatsink; as he stated “since they sent it along.” We fired it up and ran FurMark on the 15 minute 1920x1080 benchmark. It made it the entire 15 minutes but maxed out at 77C starting about 14” 30” seconds into the test; a slight improvement but not dramatic.<O</O
<O</O

Next the tech removed the thermal pads from the GPU heatsink, repasted the GPU die and pasted each of the components that the thermal pads would have been in contact with. He also at this point replaced the ‘X’ frame plate on the bottom of the video card and pasted the ‘X’ portion of the frame as well. We ran FurMark again and this time it ran the full 15 minutes and maxed out at 76C. The tech at that point said it was probably as good as it was going to get and he didn’t really have anything else to try. The tech was a good guy and obviously cared; he just didn't have anything else to try or to try with at the time.<O</O
<O</O

About 30 minutes later I decided to run FurMark again and this time it throttled at 78C about 13 minutes into the benchmark. A note here, the machine was on my desk in my office at idle between the two FurMark runs and the ambient temperature was ~ 22C; obviously on a solid desktop with nothing blocking the fans.<O</O
<O</O

I emailed Dell support back telling them of the problem and I copied Bill on the email. Bill emailed me back almost immediately and said that something just wasn’t right as he and Louis had worked on Jody’s machine (see Jody’s post below) that very day and the change-out of heatsinks had made a remarkable difference. He asked if I would be willing to ship my machine down to him to have Louis work on it. I was more than willing and Bill was kind enough to send me a FedEx label to ship it down.<O</O
<O</O

This morning the machine got boxed-up and is off to Bill’s desk via FedEx. I am hoping that Louis can work the magic on mine they way he did on Jody’s. Obviously, I will report back when the machine gets back from Bill and Louis.<O</O
<O</O

I can’t say enough good things about Bill’s willingness to intercede and take personal involvement to make things right with our machines on Dell’s behalf. He is an absolute credit to Dell in going above and beyond for us as a group and for a number of us individually. Bill, I can’t begin to tell you how much your dedication and your efforts are appreciated!<O</O
<O</O

More to follow, when the machine gets back…<O></O>
Regards,<O</O
Cliff<O</O
<O</O

 

I'm going to video this heat sink swap tomorrow.

 

It 's an excellent idea to make a video

 

Not trying to start anything here just looking for honest opinion.
Just bought a m17X R3 with the 580M from the Dell outlet about 15 minutes ago.

Should I cancel the order and find one with the Radeon card instead?

 

Personally, I'd stick with it (and I've had a couple of issues!). The 580 is an awesome performer at stock and it depends on what you intend to use it for. If you're an avid overclocker/tinkerer then probably best to not go for this card in the M17x but there must me many, many 580 users that have no problems - of course you will see all the people that do have issues here!

 

Thanks MickyD1234.

I know there are some problems out there ... its nice to know there are folks with no issues.

 

looking forward to see the vid.

 

I just got your box, Cliff. Waiting for Louis to reply to my email and heading up to the lab. I'll shoot the video and post it from home tonight. Forgot my phone mini USB cable.

 

Definitely looking forward to the video. Should be interesting.

Would've thought you guys would have plenty of those lying around the office

 

Not any for the stupid HTC proprietary port.

I guess Louis was busy today. Never heard back. I'll use my camera and tripod at home to shoot me doing the swap. You won't have superstar Louis. You're stuck with me. At least if I do it right and get idle temps in the mid-30's or high-30's, that's proof it can be done by anybody.

 

Boo...that's why I'm not a fan of proprietary stuff.

The video will be great help. It would also be great if you could post a picture of the thermal pad placement on the heatsink (i.e. what it should look like).

 

My son will not go to sleep. We put him on the AIO with some touch based drum game in hopes we can keep him in one spot while my wife shoots the swap. Here goes. Will update with link to the video.

 

My video skills are very weak. I'm not posting this. lol. I'll shoot one with Louis instead. New heatsink installed. The old one was missing 2 of the large thermal pads. The one I got had the long, skinny pad, the L-shaped pad and one of the long, light green ones stuck to the side of the bag. I had to re-pad. Also, one corner of the thermal solution on the copper that touches the GPU was rubbed off inside the bag, so this may be a crap shoot. Right now I'm trying to get the Nvidia desktop widget to work. It keeps crashing. Will post back screenshots of the idle temps when I figure it out.

Idle temp was high at 44C. I was afraid of that after seeing that missing corner. Ambient temp is 26C in my home office tonight. Running Furmark 15 minute test now. (Not Dell supported or approved, but I'll warranty any failure in this case.) Will update this post with the max temp on the 15 minute run.



I'll run it again and post the next screenshot on a new post.

 

Wow, that sounds like about the same condition that the replacement heat sinks for my M18x arrived it. They don't seem to take a lot of care in packaging them.

These are some awesome Dell customer love stories. I already knew you guys were awesome, but what fantastic examples. +1... wish I could give +1,000.

 

Yeah. I wonder if there's a better way to ship. Those pads are semi-adhesive on both sides. They stick to the inside of the bag just as well as they do the heatsink. 9:30 into Furmark, and max temp is 57C so far.

I think I nailed it even with a missing corner of thermal solution. I'll check with Louis tomorrow, but I think it spreads when you screw it down.

 

They are supposed to have a mylar film covering them if I am remembering what Louis said accurately. The pad for the back plate did, in fact, have the protective mylar film. That would help keep them from sticking to the bubble-pack bags.

 

Hey guys, finally getting settled in England. Still waiting on getting our internet and cable set up. Should be done sometime on Monday. Been having to use the work computers and the ones in the library. I took the back cover off my laptop and took some pictures of the heatsinks. I didn't remove them to check how the pads were since I don't have any pads to replace them or any paste to repaste.

Spoiler

How do they look? The security settings on government computers wont let some images show, so I can't compare my heatsinks with others. If I do look like I need a replacement, how do I go about getting them sent to England? Would I be able to get a replacement kit sent to my home and do it myself, or would I need to have a tech come out? I'd much rather do it myself.

 

Looks good to me from what I can see. Your CPU heatsink is in better condition than mine. Mine's a bit worn from all the stress

 

I think I can see the thin 'strip' is misplaced in your last pic. I've seen many pics from other users with this not running along the edge (and it contacts the voltage regulators that get v hot). You'd have to remove to confirm but look back in this thread for a pic of a factory pad/paste I posted. It's kinda like a strip of putty about 3mm thick, never seen it sold

 

^^Oh yeah now I see it. Yeah you should have a thin bit of thermal pad about 2-3mm thick running along the rear of the card. That bit gets the absolute hottest.

 

@SkylineLvr It looks mostly ok from the top. That thin strip is hard to get to stay in place. It seems to not get a lot of press down pressure from the heat sink when you tighten it down. I think it needs to be thicker, but then it will just be a little more top heavy (?) and will tip to the side when you barely touch it as you put the heat sink on. Have you seen throttling?

 

I haven't had any throttling issues. Just wanted to make sure my set up looked good. Currently my temp sits at 54C and goes up to the mid to high 60Cs while gaming. But if getting a replacement will cut my temps down 10C as it seems some have seen, then I wouldn't mind getting it done.

 

No those temps are real good I would look and see where that thin strip of thermal pad as gone though. Although it wouldn't affect throttling or performance, it may affect the longevity of your card.

 

I agree with widezu. Low 50s are the correct idle temps for 3D users or those with Optimus off. Under full load at stock voltages, mid 60s is the best you'll see too.

You're not gonna get better temperatures than that. All the '33C idle' temps clearly mean cold boots and therefore very misleading to those not aware of that - the card will warm up quickly.

However with Optimus, the Nvidia card is almost off so it cools down to the lower 40s. All this info is with stock fan profile/control in mind.

 

That is also another concern of mine. Since I am playing around with the .92vBIOS, I want to make sure I don't end up frying the card. Although I use a custom fan profile to keep everything cool while gaming, it's just that extra piece of mind to have.

 

Good point. I didn't think of that. The unit I did the swap on last night max temp I saw in 5 different Furmark runs was 74, but it stayed rock solid at 69-70 for 99% of the test.

 

I don't know about that .92v vBios. I would be extremely careful with that. The card clearly throttles without much overclocking. I can't imagine very many people can "max out" the clocking capability of the .87v software. In fact, I don't think anyone does. Therefore I don't know the reason for the existence of a .92vDC version at all since we can't get the clocks high enough to even need it without hitting the throttle limit.

 

^^Didn't quite understand that post but I've been using the 0.92v vbios and I have yet to see temps above 70C gaming personally. I have a good paste job and I make sure that all my pads are in the correct place and making proper contact. I just wanted to let people know that if you know what you are doing, the 78C throttle can be avoided. Truly.

 

I get what you're saying, widezu. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that the reason to push more voltage to the card is so that you can attain higher stable clocks than are achievable at .87. In the case of this card, I believe .87 supports the highest clocks we can get without bumping 78C. Therefore, there isn't anything to be gained by going to .92 and for those that aren't extremely careful and well cooled, it's a recipe for smoking the card which is not terribly likely if you stay with .87.

That's just my opinion. If you aren't chasing some really high clocks for an awesome benchmark, then .92v is just stressing the card for no reason. I didn't mean to imply that there is no point in .92 at all. I think .92 is only really useful for people trying to get to the hairy edge of performance who also have a lot of experience. For regular gamers like myself, .92 serves no purpose other than smoking a card.

You guys KNOW that you have to run a custom fan profile and have excellent thermal pads, paste, and heat sink to get into the clocks where .92v is useful. A lot of people won't read all of the necessary threads and wind up with a dead laptop running that vBios.

There's nothing wrong with the .92v rom in and of itself as long as you know exactly what you are doing. Widezu and many others do know exactly what they are doing. For a regular gamer, there are steps to using that thing safely far beyond just knowing how to flash it.