The Newb's Guide to Repasting Your G73

If you are in high-performance or entertainement mode and your GPU idles at 50C it makes little sense. You should not repaste.

If you want to be "really" sure, you can run furmark and see where it takes you. Check out some posts on this site and use the same settings and compare. If you don't go over 90°C in Furmark, no need.

 

I agree that unless your "load" temps go over 90c there is no pressing need to repaste. It is hard to compare idle temps because there are so many variables (ambient temperature, clock speed voltage, gpu usage, etc). Furmark will bring your gpu to 100% load and then we can make a better comparison. It is also good to know the ambient temp also. Since you are in central Europe I imagine it is fairly cold right now so you should be good. The guys in Australia and the Phillipenes with no A/C have real challenges. Also according to your signature you are using bios 209. 211 runs the fans at higher rpms. If I where you I'd try 211 and see how that lowers your temps before repasting.

A good rule of thumb I got from Asus is that any furmark test (over 10 minutes) under 90C is excellent (per Asus). Under 100C is ok, over 100C and you should definitely repaste.

 

Repasted my G73, major props to BTO + this guide. Something of a wonder that it boooted back up

Furmark took me to 84C, before i'd hit 101 C before closing it after seeing triple digits.

 

That's nice new temps for you. By the way, what thermal paste did you use?

 

Glad it helped you. Congrats on your temps. Almost identical to mine.

 

Guess what I got today? ^^ Still deciding if I might repaste though, my GPU doesn't really need it but my CPU temps are slowly rising lately.

 

[QUOTE

Guess what I got today? ^^ Still deciding if I might repaste though, my GPU doesn't really need it but my CPU temps are slowly rising lately.[/QUOTE]

Two tubes? That's a lot of repasting.

 

I got my ICD today, and I think I'm *not* going to repaste. I'll just hold the paste in reserve - although furmark can get the temps up to 100, starcraft only gets them to 89.

 

I would do it. If I knew my machine could play SC2 at 76C, then that is enough reason for me to do it.

While at it, I would also tape the fan to the radiator. The radiator is not attached to the fan. It's kept there by a very weak piece of plastic taped to the fan. I know cooling can be improved overall if you have the fan tightly taped to the fan. This way ALL the hot air is passed over the radiator rather than escaping into the laptop and just improves cooling a bit.

 

Thanks for the tape suggestion. When I'm talking about temps, I'm talking about the memIO - generally, the core temp maxes out at 77, which is what most programs will report as the "real" temp.

 

Thank you for this guide! My average temps across the GPU board per HWinfo32 and GPU-Z were 58C to 65C. Now after a repaste my average are now 46C to 53C. It also seems after a repaste my CPU temps have dropped and average of 8 to 9 degrees C. I did forget to tape the fan and radiators, but I am not going to go and take it all apart again.

 

Congrats on the new temps. I'm glad it helped.

 

Awww.. makes me so jealous I'm dying to have a repaste T_T

By the way, would you mind telling us what paste you have used on your CPU and GPU?

I'll be posting here too my before and after, after I repaste mine.

You've repasted your CPU too? What happened to the warranty sticker?

 

Oh I used ICD7 and maintained furmark temp of 84C for 1 hour with a GPU fan speed reported at aprox 45,000 RPMs based on hwinfo32. I did not touch the CPU because of the sticker and voiding my warranty. I think the extra heat generated by the video card before the repaste was causing the CPU to appear to heat up. During the 1 hour testing period the CPU never reported higher temps then 60C while the GPU never went about 84C.

 

Tol, We used IC Diamond. It works perfectly. Today im going to meet scampupy. Another filipino member of this fourm. He's gonna buy my last tube of ICD7. If you want, the three of us can meet. And you can ask him to put some paste in your gpu. You could just pay him around 200pesos. And you guys can repaste together. I'll PM you my number.

 

Things to consider-

-All temp comparisons are meaningless unless we know what the ambient temp was when you tested. What you are really trying to measure is difference between GPU temp and ambient temp.
-Idle temps are useless unless we know what "idle" means to you, the ambient temp and how long it was idle. Temp needs to stabilize.
-Furmark runs hotter in a window than fullscreen, and be sure that vsync is not forced in CCC.
-The newest video and/or system BIOS may have a tweaked fan profile to limit max temp via higher fan speeds.
-All GPUs have slightly different power output, meaning temps will vary between them. Not every die is identical. There are outliers.
-The difference between the best pastes and worst is not that significant. It matters more how you apply the paste (really that you just have complete coverage and no air bubbles) and that you just do have some sort of TIM. The G73s have a slight problem with the RAM thermal pads preventing good GPU/heatsink mating because they are ever slightly too thick and the mounting screw-springs too weak.

 

I will rerun the tests, I know ambient temp was right around 20C in the area of the laptop and furmark was windowed. I did not take in consideration of the rest. Thank you for info.

 

Just finished my repaste with great help from this thread. The good news is that my g73jh went from 110+ furmark in 3 minutes to 85 after 5 minutes of furmark (with a few minutes of gentle polishing of heatsink before ic diamond). Bad news is broke the socket for the speaker right of the motherboard I reattached it carefully and still have use of one of my speakers.

 

I guess you will be using headphones more often, or external speakers.

 

Yeah, I game with headphones anyway.

 

Just registered to say thanks to this thread.

My G73Hj GPU was running a desktop temp of 75C+ and some games would take it to 110C+! After repasting using ArtiClean and IC Diamond 7, it now has a desktop temp of about 50C and the games that used to push it to 110C now don't take it higher than 77C. The fan used to be running full-blast almost all the time. How the machine is so quiet.

This thread was a big help and motivation for repasting. Thanks. Things went off without a hitch.

One little bit of feedback: I, like many others had a hard time with the keyboard, and I wasn't able to find any useful information on how to get the keyboard off. It would be helpful if your walkthrough contained some extra explanatory text on how to get the keyboard tabs. Something like this:

To remove the keyboard, insert the screwdriver down diagonally away from the keyboard. If you're pulling the cover and not the keys, you're not aiming far enough back and/or pushing far enough down. The screwdriver should go in about 3mm from the surface of the keyboard.

EDIT: I've been building my own desktops since the mid 90s (when building machines was much harder) but had never done anything with a laptop more complex than a memory upgrade. But the experience with old desktops came in very handy because I knew how to remove and apply very small and fragile parts, which is usually unnecessary with modern desktops. So, if you're wondering whether you should repaste yourself, know that, for me, it wasn't exactly easy, but it went off without a hitch to great results.

 

After my initial fubar, I use a small plastic ice scraper for the tape removal. Works like a charm. And no, I do not put the tape back, it's really not needed.

 

Same as the guy before me many thanks to for the guide and all who contributed. I sucessfuly completed my repaste on my g73-jh-b1. Temps had started at 84 loaded and have been climbing ever since to 91. Re-pasted with AS5 i got from my buddy. Didn't break anything, keyboard was a pain, but slow and steady got it out.

New temps before 200 hour break in are 54 idle and 77 after 20 mins of Dawn of war 2 menu (for some reason that menu loads up the gpu at 100% constant).

I did however have a problem when i re-assembled the first time. My battery worked but windows or the MB couldn't see it. I had to plug in to start. When i removed the AC, windows would shut down normally like when the batt is low. Battery was charged for sure before re-paste.

Dis-assembled to MB, tried to power on, battery works! Reassemble the "service panel", battery works! Screw in half the bottom screws, battery dosen't work! remove three screws, works again. put one back, works, another, works, another works... put em all back and everything works. I have no idea what happened, i imagine a pinched cable or something, but everyhting works now so I let it be. I hope it dosen't come back to haunt me.

Anyone know which cable this is related?

 

Most likely a pinched cable as you said. Hopefully it hasn't frayed too much so when you attempt to get it fixed they won't notice.

Doesn't look good though...

 

Did you make it sure that your power options -> vid card is set to maximum performance and not maximum battery life? That settings will make a big difference in both temperature and performance while running furmark or games. Or maybe your ambient temperature is too low.

I'm a bit skeptical for those who are getting < 90c temps running at peak performance and power options -> vid card set to maximum performance (not maximum battery life).

Mine is around 100c-105c running furmark. I felt the exhaust fan and it was really hot that I can't almost endure it longer which makes me think that the heat transfer is great (that no repasting is needed).

I am only getting 85c running furmark only when I set the power options -> vidcard to maximum battery life even it is plugged in. That really made the difference of course both to performance and temperature. I am thinking that maybe those guys who can't get past 85c must have ran their furmark while power options -> vid card is set to maximum battery life. It also takes a while to get to 105c, like 45 min of furmark.

I'd be happy to see you guys repost here your temps and ambient temps while making sure that the power option -> vid card is set to maximum performance and not maximum battery life.

 

Here's a furmark run that should annoy you Ambient 19C

 

I guess we all have something to shoot for now, great job. I would be happy if I am under 90...

 

Furry donuts rear their furry little heads again.

 

6 months after repaste and she's still at the same temps

 

So I pasted using AS5 and it was better than the after rma temperatures but still unsatisfying. I'm planning on trying ICD but I was wondering if anyone fiddled with other thermal pads or tried putting ICD on the thermal pads / memory chips.

 

Wow. Sweeeet system.

 

i just can't believe it! i wonder what would be the temp if ambient was something like 27 or 28. Would the difference just add up? Like if you're getting 77 @19, you'd be getting 87 @29?

 

@Frankie: That's *my* experience, a jump from 22 to 26 gives me about a 6C increase in chip temp.

 

Actually, I consistently get those temps upwards towards 24C ambient... my fan cycle ramps up at 77, so it idles between 76-77, then it may creep up to 79C if ambients go up higher.

 

With BIOS 211?

 

I'm on 213 BIOS, but that should have the same fan settings as 211.

 

Meh me and DCx will stick to our 90's C furmark temps lol

 

Thank you for the indept explanation. Did help me a a lot with the disassembly. Right now after repasting and so far idle temp is at 52C after running for about 10 mins.

+rep

P.S the air flow comming out of my vent in the back is cool now. maybe i should hook it up to the AC system.

 

Glad it helped. Congrats on your new temps.

 

Hello, i bought an asus g73 in march 2010 and tought it was working fine until i tried to play RIFT earlier this month, game had just came out and the required specs shouldnt have given much trouble to the laptop.

I started getting very choppy graphics couple minutes after i logged in the game, getting between 2 and 15 FPS depending on the amount of people on my screen and it wouldnt matter if i was on low or high settings. One thing i realized was that the computer wasnt choppy at all in the first 2-3 minutes of the game. So as soon the temperature went up, my computer started getting choppy, i would be at around 98 celcius average with spikes of 104 celcius.

I followed this guide and the videos to repaste (and actually cleaned alot of dust at the same time) and my temperatures went down to about 72 celcius average with about 77 celcius spikes. My FPS went up at the same time, averaging 45 fps and going down to about 25 fps with more than 50 people on my screen, all of that on maximum graphic settings.


I would like to thank everyone that worked on the guide since i had basically never opened a laptop before and had very little knowledge in electronics and everything went fine (and my speakes still work!!)


edit: I would like to point out that i have tried new BIOS, new drivers for everything and also used the guide on RIFT forums about increasing performance before i repasted and no other options worked.

 

hey guys, before u repaste, consider this:

i cleaned my rear vents today. i did a sloppy job, didnt work all too hard on it cause i didnt want to spend the hour(s) to literally disassemble my sweet sweet laptop, but i managed to bring a fair amount of dust out of there, and my temps dropped from max 103 (average 99) to max 92.5 (average 82.5)!!!! i swear i didnt put too much energy into the job, but still, this is not negligible.. nah its significant!! im happy for now, maybe if i do this regularly i'll even stay happy for quite some time before i have to do some "serious" cleaning job

and btw, i havd this machine since appr. 6 months, so i think its quite a reasonable time to start worrying about dust in a laptop. dust might be the major problems of many people in all tese repaste forums (i know i know surely not all of them )?!?!?

also i forgot to mention, that on of the heatsink screws was a bit loosened, so i tightened it. i couldnt reach all 4 screws cause i didnt disassemble my machine, i was only abel to reach 2 of them through the backpanel.

 

My re-pasting experience didn't go as smoothly as everyone above.
I repasted my G73 with ICD7 and got very good temp the 1st time, but lost webcam and microphone. In an attempt to get back the webcam and microphone, I managed to kill the motherboard. However, after an rma I got it back repasted with unknown thermal paste and temp has been as good as or better then before. So I guess application method can be important in order to get good temp.
p/s:


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Amen. 10char.

 

followed this step by step, and went slow. no extra screws. went backwards exact same way. no power/no charge light. gonna retry tomorrow. if anyone had same problem and/or knows issue. please share.

 

Someone had that problem, turns out the wlan card antenna wires touching the reset button. This might or might not be your problem. Still wouldn't hurt to check.

 

Just like Tijo said, look at your wifi wires. Very common problem. It can also be a loose connector if wifi isnt it. Don't get nervous or rushed. This happened to me twice, both times easy fixes, just be patient while redoing it.

 

Ok this is prolly a stupid question but I have the same problem of my g73jh not powering after I repasted. Where is the reset button and how do I make sure that no wires are touching it? I was worried about taking apart the notebook but 86 degree C idle temp forced my hand.

 

The reset button is under the keyboard, close to where the wires for the wi-fi are. A little under the GPU fan.

 

Thank you for this wonderful guide. I just repasted and was using this guide as reference + BTO video

My temps were slowsly rising since last summer from 55C idle to 70 idle and gaming max from 78 to 98C. I was a little bit afraid to tear this thing apart but figured that I'll have to do it one day anyway so just started taking it apart

Couple of notes from my experience:
SOUND CABLE - cant stress this enough, I almost ripped that thing from the MB. In the BTO video they dont show it at close and I couldnt make heads or tales on the photos here and thought that the head is the whole thing, then I saw this http://i.imgur.com/xKbtM.jpg and stopped doing what I was doing. Once again http://i.imgur.com/xKbtM.jpg is NOT what you need.
Everything else is quite simple.. had a little trouble with the paste and never knew if I applied correctly and you cant really check until you assemble and test

Anyway, at the moment I'm 59C idle at 30C ambient (80F) and 80C max while gaming. Its a lot better, not sure that the best. Maybe I'll repaste once again in some time.

 

For the audio connector, I use a small jeweler's flat screwdriver to lift the upper and lower side, and when it's loosened, I use needle-nose pliers to lift it up whole.