Over heating and frame rate issues with WoW?!

Yesterday I went over to my friend's house with my mALX lappy to WoW all day with my best bud. However before I went I had updated my video driver. I made the mistake of chosing the option that has window's do this and it used a "bad": driver. So when I experienced fps problems in wow I attributed it to the driver and rolled it back to the one I had been using for a year.

Still had fps/lagg problems and finally realized that I had not "plugged in" the laptop cooler (fans), so it was simply overheating), lol. Once plugged in the fps problem went away....until I went home.

Then I experienced more fps problems. I put an exteranl fan on the back end of my lappy and it solved the problem. Probably didn't help that the fireplace was on and heating the room up, but still this had never been a problem before.

So this morning I boot up the mALX and get into WoW and without even playing the internal fan comes on and fps is low. What is up and how do I "fix it"?

Oh and when I log off from WoW the internal fan shuts down, immediatley!

So my questions are:
1-Should I open her up and clean off the internal fan? I did blow it off from the outside.
2-Update to the most current "correct" drivers that AW has posted?
3-Does using an external monitor effect it? It never used to.
4-any other suggestions?

Oh and my video cards are dual G71 7950GTX with 512mb (I am not using the SLI config, as it messes up WoW).

Thanks.

 

Yeah open her up and spray some compressed air to get rid of the dust.
It can't hurt to try, i have to use AW's own because it doesn't work properly without (constant downclocking in xp)
Well depends if the resolution is higher, if so, then the graphic card has to work harder, therefore generating more heat.

 

When was the last time you cleaned the dust from your fans?

 

People clean dust from their fans?

I've never seen it.

pix or it never happened!

 

haha! Mystic, you are not an AW employee are u?

 

Well I opened "her" up and cleaned out the fans with compressed air. The fans were not very dusty at all. I have had this mALX since June-2007. I also cleaned off the vents on the outside of the laptop, they were a little more dusty.

Then I installed Speed Fan on both my mALX and my M15X. The tempertaure on the mALX usually starts out in the 55 degree Celsius range and right now with IE, Outlook and Windows Messenger open it is running anywhere from 62 to 78 degrees and yes the fan is running. Now when I run WoW, it get's as high as 87 C!! This is the core temperature. Their is no recorded temps for the two video cards.

On my MX15, the core runs much cooler, about 35-40 degrees Celsius. With WoW playing it climbs to the upper 50's. However the single GPU runs hot, about 70C.

So my question is: How accurate is Speed Fan? What else do I need to do with the mALX to reduce the heat? I have been running a small fan outside the laptop to cool it down and it does seem to help by cooling her down 5 degrees or so.

Thanks.

 

LOL!

nahhhhh, just a vetran about this kinda stuff.

speedfan should be accurate about the temps, if you're really concerned maybe look into reseating the heatsinks on the GPUs and CPU. It's kind of a complicated process though, so take your time if you're going to attempt it. If you have any warranty with AW, take advantage of it and send it in. the mALX is a BEAST of a machine (and by that, I mean HUUUUUGE), and should be given a little extra TLC if possible. Since it would be so easy to mess it up.

87 deg. C, isn't too much to worry about. most M15X's will reach that, depending on mfg date and specs (as well as some background factors like thermal paste, and how it was applied when the system was created)...

No real need to be overly concerned... if you want to cool it down a bit further, maybe consider a laptop cooler or something. (Look up the Targus Chillmat if you're unsure what that is... though, the chillmat would be WAY too small for the mALX)

 

I had no problems with my mALX with "normal use" (web surfing, playing games on Pogo or poker on Pokerstars), but graphics-intensive games such as Crysis or WoW would cause the screen to go black after playing a short time. I tried removing and reseating the graphics cards and pulling them one at a time to try to locate the bad card. The screen still blacked out regardless of which card was in the system. As a last resort before buying a new laptop I bought a Zalman ZM-NC2000 Notebook Cooler. It completely solved the problem. I haven't had a single black screen with WoW since getting the cooler, whereas I couldn't play the game for more than 30 min before. The area around the row of buttons above the keypad now feels slightly warm rather than HOT like it did before. The Zalman is extremely quiet, works like a charm, and the $60 or so I paid for it is a LOT cheaper than the $3000 I was going to spend on a new system!