Normal peak temps when gaming?

Eg. Crysis 2, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Shogun Total War and the like.

I get around 80-95 after 15 minutes or so. Wondering whether it's normal for it to be that high. Also, do post your fan speed / rpm during peak.

I get like 680+ rpm for my fan but weird thing is, according to GPU-Z fan speed is always at 30%. Even when it's idle.

(M17x-R2 owner here)

 

Seems odd that your fans max at 680ish rpm. I get like 3000rpm and max out at 73 degrees.

 

Whoa! 3000rpm?! Something must be wrong with my fans then. What should I do?

 

Well, it's possible gpuz is reading your fan speed incorrectly. When you game do you hear your fans run at differing speeds? Listen carefully and report back. If they do get louder as you ge, I think the fans are fine. Were the temps always high, or is it recent? May just need to clean out your vents with canned air. Dust can raise temps a ton.

 

Looks like an overheating issue. Ran Crysis 2 for about 15 minutes and temps skyrocketed to 95 degrees from 55, then it started to stutter. Max rpm for the fans is just 400 rpm, and strangely enough, it says fan speed is at 100%. Yet I don't hear the fans whirring up. Gonna prop open the back cover and check for dust behind the system fan. (I don't suppose I need to check the ones behind the GPUs as well? Not very sure how to do that, and I don't want to risk breaking anything important.)

 

Just cleaned the system fan vents with tissue and some really hard blowing (no compressed air cans with me atm, and wow so much dust). As for the GPU vents, I have to remove the graphic cards before I can clean them right?

But first I need to remove the keyboard, and to do that, I need to remove the indicator panel first, yes?

Not necessary to remove the palmrest first right?

Am thinking of ~
1. Remove Battery
2. Remove Back Panel
3. Remove Indicator Panel
4. Remove Keyboard
5. Remove Left Graphics Card
6. Remove Right Graphics Card
7. Remove L/R GPU fans
8. Clean vents

Is that order right? ^

 

I use to clean my gpu vents without opening the machine, by sucking under the vents with a vaccum cleaner, remember to hold the fans still with something thin like a screwdriver small enough to stick through the vents while doing this. I do it this way, because I broke my indicator panel once, and I do not want to risk it again.

 

My temps peak at 65c with stock paste and running furmark for 30 mins. This is with overclocking too. Oh, and I'm on the 460.

 

Zergslayer, the r3 has better peak temps than the r2. Here is a screenshot of my temps after gaming Dirt 2 on Ultra 1200p

 

Oh didn't notice op had a r2, my bad.

 

Ouch. I just tried Crysis 2 again, this time it peaked at 106 degrees. Should I call Dell to send someone down to check the vents or should I do it myself?

Anything in particular that I should look out for if I'm cleaning the GPU vents myself?
Also, I think the fans might not be working right since I don't hear anything even after extended periods of time gaming.

@Simplified: Is the vacuum trick effective?

 

@ShimmerArc

The vacuum trick works like charm for me. I have never let dust accumulate though, because I vacuum it every 2 weeks. If your vents are clogged with dust it is absolutely worth giving it a good vacuum under the vents.

I use a 1400w vacuum, and a small flathead screwdriver (for watches) to hold the fans still while vacuuming. Remember, you must hold the fans still!

 

Hmm. I can't really see the fans through the vents though. And by holding it still, you mean through the sides of the laptop? Because those are the only places with fins large enough for a flathead screwdriver.

And I think my cards got a little too hot on my last Crysis 2 run, when I went onto WoW, it kinda stutters abit despite it being 60 fps. D: I hope I didn't do anything permanently damaging.
Oh, and the fans kicked up a notch after I tabbed out from WoW. Weird...

 

You will be able to see the fans if you shine with a tourchlight at the bottom of the laptop. I use a similar screwdiver as the smallest one on the picture.

 

Don't disassemble, and although that vacuum idea is cool, there is no real substitute for good old canned air. Go get some and just blow it into all your vents from multiple angles and watch the cloud of dust fly out.

Again, I will ask, have your temps ALWAYS been high? Did you install any driver mods, or for that matter, different drivers? Overclocking software?

 

Well, prior to all this I was using the Dell 8.763 drivers. Recently, I updated to AMD's 11.5 and got a huge performance boost in games like AC Brotherhood and Crysis 2 (before this framerates were just unplayable, now it's smooth as silk except for the interminent stutters / fps drops).

Not sure if temps were this high before the update, they might be for all I know. And nope, no OC-ing software.

Come to think of it.. I removed Norton's Anti virus software a few days ago before the update. Could it be due to a virus? Might reinstall it later and run some scans.

Update: WoW is suffering from weird fps drops as well. Lasts for a few seconds at most. Strangely, a few hours ago it ran fine (with Vsync and Triple Buffering). Now it lags all the time (especially when I spin the camera around) but when I turn Vsync off, it became smooth (except for the weird stutters).

 

Well, that is good news, except for the stutters, which is most likely due to heat. Canned air. Do it and don't come back here till you've done so!

Well, unless you find reinstalling the drivers fixes it. Also, you NEVER hear your GPU fans?

 

Now that I put my ear right next to it, I can hear it whir when I'm doing some intensive gaming. Very slight though. I vaguely remember it being a lot more louder when I first bought it, or maybe I just got used to it...

Are the fan speeds at 400-650 rpm normal? (For peak temps)

Will report back once I get my hands on a can of compressed air.

 

No, fans are supposed to run up into the thousands at load. When your fans REALLY kick in, you should hear it clearly, like a small vacuum cleaner or blow dryer.

 

As i told you before, instead of playing the guessing game, download hwinfo32, this will certainly tell you if your fans are spinning or not.

 

Downloaded hwinfo32 and installed it. Will try running it along with 15minutes of Crysis 2 and see if the log differs from GPU-Z's. Thanks for reminding me.

 

Just open it while on desktop, open the sensors tab, at idle your fans should be spinning a little below 2000 rpm's

and of course the log will differ from gpu-z. Keep one thing in mind, Gpuz is meant for desktop graphics cards, where the fan controller is on the card it self. This is why on a laptop it will report wrong fan speed, the fans on our laptop are attached to the motherboard and not to the card.

 

I took two screenshots. One during idle and one after a bit of Crysis 2.

Idle

Ran Crysis 2 for 15 minutes.
15 Minutes Later

Log from hwinfo32, if it helps, or if anyone wants to take a look.
Hwinfo32 Idle to Load log.CSV

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with your fans. Nearly every program made for fan control/detection can not read laptop fan info correctly for their life. My fans are also at 680rpm all the time, even though this is false. Speed fan displays my fans as being at 218,844 rpm all the time which is also false obviously.

From what I can figure out, the correct fan speed is around 3000rpm maybe a bit more like 3800rpm. If your fans were at 680rpm, not only would they be silent, but you would feel barely any air at all coming out the back of the laptop and your laptop would overheat and shut off after a few minutes of heavy usage. . . . since you were saying it's hard to hear them, my guess is a large build up of dust. Take off the keyboard, and then take out the gpus and blow the dust out of the heatsinks.

My temps (mind you they are 4870's, but they are at 700mhz with an overvolt) are around 85C when gaming. Furmark brings them up to about 93-95C.

I don't think anythings wrong. Just make sure everything is dust free, and if you haven't already consider repasting the cpu and gpu's.

 

I was going to do that last night but it's so hard to take the indicator panel off and I don't want to risk leaving a permanent mark trying to pry it open (I already did, some paint got chipped so I don't want to make it worse.) :/

Going to try blowing some air into the vents and see if it helps.

 

After playing Brink and Starcraft 2 for several hours @ 1080 and ultra settings the laptop never broke 70c. My NP8150 was hitting 90c+ doing the samething!
I love the cooling on this beast.

 

Glad to hear that Stelio, but i don't think the OP is interested in how good your R3 is at cooling since is not of any help.

OP: your idle temps are high, as well as your load temps. You should try to get your laptop opened and do some cleaning/repaste. You fans are fine as you can see from GPU0/GPU1 sensor reading on hwinfo32.

Just for information, which are your room temperatures?

 

If it would be mine I would just call DELL without screwing my head by cleaning anything. I would just let dell people do that Maybe fan rpm is reading not properly but temperature must be correct. 85+ is critical (yeah I know it can work up to 105C but it is not healthy).

 

Where did you read that 85 is critical? source?

For laptop video cards 80/85 is plenty normal. Thermal shut down should be @120 degrees. The 115 degrees seen on the OP screenshot, that's "critical" if you want to call it like that.

 

Sorry, you picked wrong man. I am not one of that who is mad on data-sheets as the only prove. If you had read carefully and understood meaning of my words you would knew that it meant "not healthy" at least "I want to call it like that." Source? It is based on my experience if you accept this. Besides there are different graphic chips and on laptops, if you mentioned that, and you will not be happy trying to prove "Mr and Mrs" Dell/Alienware, Sony, HP and other manufactures that temperature below 120C should be OK and they should change all motherboard on couple-weeks-after-warranty-expired broken laptop for free.
Someone said that 5C lesser temperature means twice longer lifetime. Example: laptop will work for 1 month straight without a rest on 95 degrees C before it breaks while it could work for 2 month with 90C temperature. This should work not only for straight fully load laptop. All is way approximately (which means that I told this to other members, you can skip this paragraph ).

 

There's nothing wrong with your fans -- both GPU fans are running at approximately 4300rpm under load (the fan speeds under the EC section (2d section) of HWiNFO32 are the ones that matter). Put simply, your GPU temps are way too high, dangerously high, for 5870's at stock clocks. Start by thoroughly cleaning the vents (intake and exhaust) and fans and the general interior of your R2 and re-test. It is likely that temps will improve, but not enough, in which event you need to thoroughly clean the GPU's and replace the thermal paste and pads. Your temps should not exceed 85C (and mostly under 80C) at 700/1000 after 15 minutes of gaming. Good luck. Hope the cleaning solves the problem, but wouldn't count on it given your current temps. Sorry.

 

sorry mate, i did overreact on your statement. Yes those temps are not critical but of course not healthy on the long run.

Still thinking that a good cleaning and possibly a repast should fix the OP problem

 

+ rep for those who helped.
(Didn't know there's a 24 hour limit to spreading rep, so I missed out on some, will +more rep later though!)

The vacuum trick worked like a charm. I took the old vacuum cleaner that I use for my car and thoroughly zipped through the rear GPU vents and the sides.

Now peak temps are at 80-85.

Hmm. But the strange thing is, the weird fps drops are still there (Crysis 2). And for some odd reason, alt-tabbing seems to cure it, for the next minute or so.

EDIT: Alt-tabbing didn't help. Crysis 2 consistently lags every few minutes or so and the fps takes a big hit. Then it recovers, and everything is smooth again, at least for the next few minutes before the next spike. Happens during the loading cinematics as well.

 

Try to delete paging file and play again after you also derfrag game folder using Piriform defraggler. Maybe that will help but I am not sure. At least it will not be worse.

 

Great to hear that my good old vacuum trick worked like charm, I really do not understand why people bother to open up the pc, pull out the gpus etc, when the vacuum will work just as well

Congrats!

 

Because you can easily damage components especially when it's hot summer because of electrostatic. As I heard many people already spoiled their laptops because of that. However I did that in early spring and with already half-opened laptop when I could see a vent and vent grill.