M17x R2 - AMD Mobility 5870 getting too hot?

I have an Alienware M17x-R2 with a 5840 ATI Radeon card. Also, plugged into my M17X-R2 is a 21-inch monitor. I have the desktop spread across two screens (the laptop screen and the 21-inch monitor).

Today, I was playing EVE online in windowed mode for about an hour when, all of a sudden, my laptop shutdown. It was instant, like the power had been turned off. I noticed that the keyboard was really hot, so I'm assuming the graphics card was running pretty hot and it shut down.

When I booted back up, I downloaded a temp monitor and it said my temp was 75 degrees celsius. Is this too hot? I play a lot of games (Skyrim, SWTOR, EVE Online) and I've never had my laptop just shutdown all of a sudden. And, this is the first time I've noticed the keyboard being so hot.

Am I being worried about nothing? It's just disconcerting the way the laptop just instantly died without any warning...

My driver, according to device manager, is version 8.920.0.0 with a driver date of 11/9/2011. The card is ATI Radeon 5840.

Thanks for any advice!

 

Keep watching your temps and make sure they do not exceed 90. Maybe a paste job will reduce the heat you are running into. It should be at that temperature only at a full run (without a thermal paste job). And by the way, your GPU no is 5870M and not 5840

 

Doh! You're right, it's a 5870. I don't know why I tyed 5840.

Apply some paste, eh? I'll look on Youtube and see if there are some videos on doing that. I've never had this laptop apart, so it'll be interesting to see what I need to do in order to fix this issue.

Thanks for your help!

 

i'd check your CPU temps too. Usually with shutdown, its the CPU. If the vid card overheats, you would normally get a screen freeze

Was that 75c idle or underload? 75 is very high for idle, but its very good for load on a 5870m