A G51J Temperature Reduction Guide For Those Not Tech Savvy

An excellent advanced guide on G51 Optimization has been written here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/401345-optimization-guide-asus-g51.html

I don’t know if it will work for you, but this guide was written for a G51VX. In my experience, undervolting the i7 did not really work, and the GTX 260m’s vBIOS seems to be unreadable. Therefore this is a guide that helps you reduce your temperatures without undervolting (although if we figure it out, it would still be a good idea for advanced users).

This makes me think that ASUS changed the optimization game for G51J users, locking us out of many tweaks. However the laptop is still extremely hot, and I believe it is important to keep those temperatures down if you want the computer to last you for years to come.

First you will want to get yourself Hardware Monitor (HW Monitor) and CPU-Z. Use hardware monitor and your favourite game to see what your maximum temperatures are.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Temperatures ​

from ( Overheating: How hot is too hot? | Notebook-Cooling.com)

The point of this guide is longevity, not performance. Therefore, we will be using conservative values for our maximum temperatures. It is important to note that high temps, even “within acceptable limits” will reduce the lifespan of your laptop.

Therefore, we will find maximum temperatures as follows:

CPU (i7 720QM) : 70 - 74
GPU (GTX 260m) : 85 - 88
Hard Drive: 50 (you should not have too many problems with your hard drive temps).

Your temperatures will vary depending on the temperature of your room, so don’t be surprised if some people report temps higher or lower than your own.

2. Drivers​

In testing I have noticed that I obtained the lowest temperatures with the NVIDIA 186.82 drivers for laptops. They are WHQL certified.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...notebooks-supported-geforce-300m-support.html

This is something you might want to test yourself, but in my experience (and others it seems) load temps are a little lower with this driver.

In the NVIDIA control panel --> manage 3d settings, ensure you have it set to “Adaptive” Power Management.

You can use CPU-Z to ensure that your GPU is “downclocking” when you aren’t doing anything. Look under the graphics tab.

Doing Nothing: Clocks should read 200/400/120
Watching a Video: Clocks should read 383/767/301 or less.

You might need to wait a minute to see this happen. If you don’t, powermizer is not working.

This means you need Powermizer Manager: PowerMizer Manager 0.93 Released - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

It is simple to use, and well documented following the link. I needed to use this utility to enable down-clocking, which reduced my idle temps quite a bit (both GPU and CPU!)

3. Power 4 Gear​

Your GPU and CPU are pretty close together in your laptop, and are both cooled by one fan. Therefore, your GPU temperatures will increase as your CPU temperatures increase.

Note that P4G does nothing to the way your GPU operates.

Few games harness the full power of the i7, and therefore, we can use this program to reduce temperatures during these games.

The major setting you will want to change is “Power4Gear Processor Control”, note that the battery saving nomenclature is a little misleading, as it is just as useful when the laptop is plugged in.

Maximum Performance: Will set your CPU to full blast, using 55 Watts of power.
Moderate Battery Saving: Will throttle you CPU depending on load, usually settling around 29.4 Watts.
Maximum Battery Saving: Will throttle your CPU to it’s lowest state, 15 Watts.



You can see the effect yourself using CPU-Z.

I have added setting for "processor control" if you are not using Power 4 Gear.

Profiles:

High Performance: Set to Maximum Performance, 5% - 100%.
Useful for few games, and will increase your GPU temps by about 5 degrees. If you aren’t gaming though (photoshoping, encoding video, etc.) you will want to use this profile. With your GPU at idle, you won’t see any nasty temperatures. Also useful for games such as Fallout 3, STALKER, Metro 2033, Bad Company 2, Napoleon Total War and other extremely processor intensive games.

WINDOWS: 5 - 100 %.

Multimedia: Set to moderate battery saving, 5% - 100%.
A balanced profile for all your “other” games. Modern console ports like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 1/2, and all older games, will not benefit from maximum performance and can be played smoothly on this setting.

WINDOWS: 5 - 85 %.

Quiet Office: Set to Maximum Battery Saving, 5 – 60%.
A profile for all of you web browsing, office work, and basic laptop work that could be done on a sub $1000 computer. You could game really old games on this profile as well (e.g., I still love Thief and System Shock 2). This will keep your computer nice and quiet, and only generate the minimum amount of heat necessary.

WINDOWS: 5 - 60 %.

Battery Saving: Whatever you want.
Not really important.

WINDOWS: 5 - 60 %.

4. Coolers​

This is important. There are not many vents on the bottom of this laptop, and they receive very little airflow. The fan in the G51 is not very close to any vents, and internal air flow is minimal.

The most important thing to look at is where the vents are, and where the fans of the cooler are situated. For example, I bought my rosewell cooler without already owning the laptop, and the fans don’t really sit under any of the vents. It makes almost no difference, unless I place the laptop way off center. It works, but it is not graceful.

When you are looking to buy a cooler, bring your laptop, or measure the location of the vents. Make sure the design of the cooler covers most of those vents.

Zalman coolers are an example, but there are other coolers which do the same, as they tend to just push air up all over the place, making it hard to miss the vents If you can, bring your laptop to the store and see how it all lines up. Eventually I would like to upgrade to a solution like this.

And Now For Something A Little Different (Risky!)​

6. !!!!WILL VOID WARRANTY!!! Credit goes to Kondor999 : http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/411871-asus-g51-cooling-mod.html

This is a last resort and for the brave. You should try to buy a replacement backplate and mod that, as you will not void your warranty like I did.

The fan of your laptop sits right underneath the large circular fake vent on the top right of your laptop (when viewed from the back). If you take the plate off, and cut a large hole, and cover it using some sort of grille, you can help your laptop’s cooling system quite a bit.

PUT THE GRILLE OUTSIDE OF THE LAPTOP TO AVOID ANY SHORT CIRCUITING.

This mod only drops temperatures about 1 or 2 degrees, unless you use it with a laptop cooler. I have a low quality cooler and my temperatures went from 95 ish to 88 when playing the most demanding games (I.e. STALKER Call of Prypiat) with fullblown CPU usage.

My cooler blows air up into this hole, increasing internal air circulation.
It also bought my idle temps down to 54 from 60, but that is not super important.

These sort of temperatures changes are only 7 or 8 degrees, but this is a big deal when your GPU is in the 90’s, potentially shortening the lifespan of your GPU. A temp drop from the 80s to the 70s would be less helpful.

I suspect If i had a better cooler, my temps would drop even more.

Some people have also drilled holes above where the GPU sits, but I have not tried this.

Your experiences might not be as promising as my own, and I would strongly recommend only doing this if you cannot get your temperatures under control any other way, and can afford to take a risk. A big hole in your laptop means you have to be much more careful with it when you are transporting it around.

You will need to be much more diligent at keeping the inside of your laptop clean after completing this mod.

My own handiwork:

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad118/paperbag846/g51j/PBAG8969.jpg

My generic Cooler: Note the location of the fan holes and why this cooler is not ideal.

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad118/paperbag846/g51j/PBAG8964.jpg

In Conclusion:
​

By using the methods above, I was able to reduce the load temperatures of my laptop to sub 70 on the CPU, and Sub 90 on the GPU, no matter what.
By using Power 4 Gear properly, I am able to keep the GPU at about 82 or 83, and rarely need to game with the maximum performance setting, where my GPU jumps to 86 – 88. By only gaming with my CPU on full when I absolutely need to, I can substantially reduce the strain on my laptop.

 

props to you for the informative post. I think this will help many people with their g51j's

 

Thanks for this.

+Rep

 

I have noticed that with Windows 7 the nVidia PowerMizer is always disabled by default right after driver installation. The powermizer registry entries are always missing from the start in win 7 and official (not mods) nVidia drivers.

Can everyone confirm this?

 

This was my experience! I assumed it was ASUS, not Microsoft, who did this though.

Might explain some reports of Windows 7 killing battery life / gpu temps.

 

You know, pertaining the Card Holder portion of your article, I think you meant the dummy ExpressCard rather than the SD card. I've just found out that you can store a Memory Stick or SD card in that dummy ExpressCard.

 

I did mean that, thank you.

I don't think removing the SD card slot would help much, but removing the expresscard dummy holder has helped cool down my palmrest and has helped a little with temps.

If you pull out the dummy holder during gaming, you can FEEL how hot is in there! Luckily, heat rises .

 

But will pulling it out mean opening an hole for a torrent of dust to flow inside the laptop?

 

Yep, hehe. So is the giant hole in the bottom of my laptop. In reality, all vents allow dust in, because no size hole can stop dust - you have to open it up to clean it anyways. It might be more important to clean put my laptop now, but I would prefer lower temps and more maintenance, to a burning laptop that I still have to maintain.

Dust is unavoidable. It could probably get in through the crack between the dummy card and the case!

 

Seems like pulling out the dummy card isn't such a good idea after all. After leaving the laptop on for like 10 hours with short bursts of overclocked gaming and intensive downloading of files, the foil on the ceiling of the slot has sagged (due to heat, I guess), and now I can't seem to get my dummy card back inside. Damn!

 

I'm very sorry to hear that and I will remove it from the guide.

To help with your problem, you should be able to fix that by removing the backplate. The foil under there is easily accessible.

I find it strange that the foil morphed in such a way that it interferes with the card, as it is quite thin. I would expect you should be able to fix it.

 

hi paperbag, im wondering if its a good idea to change de internal fan for a better one , if you think so , could you let me know about a good one to replace it (like model and company)??

thx.