Asus N71JQ overheating

After doing a lot of reading and studying I decide to take my N71 apart and clean the fan/heat sink and apply new thermal paste. Much to my surprise there was hardly any dust on the fins of the heat sink, but the paste was hard as a rock. Then I was looking closer at the mother board and saw where these items (pic included) around the GPU had been extremely hot. The pic with the squares (clearer pic) is a stock photo I found because of better clarity. The other pic (with circles) is an actual pic of my mother board.
I went ahead and cleaned all the old paste off and re-applied "Artic Silver 5" just to see what would happen. It still is getting hot and slowing down after just a few minutes of browsing. I'm starting to wonder if the fan is working properly. I downloaded "Speed Fan" and even running it at 100% it's still getting hot.
I'm thinking the mother board got too hot and is damaged now. What exactly are the items that I have circled in the photos? Any and all help will be appreciated.

 

What's your GPU temp exactly? Mine is N61 and idle temp is around 50 Celsius with AC5 applied.

The overheat could be lack of airflow while your heatsink fins are clean the dust must be stuck on else where in this case i'm thinking the intake ventilation. Check if the cool air intake area which is the bottom front section of the laptop had gathered any dust.

 

I think your stock motherboard photo might be an N61 or something close since the N71 has two hard drive ports. And I believe the four components you have circled in the picture are video RAM for the GPU. I've posted quite a bit about my N71jq heat troubles in the N71 owners lounge. I did the Arctic Silver 5 upgrade and wrote that up too. I attached a picture of my motherboard in that post. My heat issues were pretty much solved after that careful work. The fan and heat exchanger on these laptops is like a one piece unit. No way to really take the fan apart for proper cleaning. But you can clean the fan impellers carefully with a pipe cleaner. And I found quite a bit of dust built up on the non-visible side of the heat exchanger just downstream from the fan. I was able to dislodge this material and blow it out with canned air. On your Arctic Silver installation, did you use the two-step recommended process of cleaning with Arcticlean? They recommend it since both the CPU/GPU and heatsink surfaces must be microscopically clean of old thermal paste so that the Arctic Silver can properly bond with the surfaces. Might just make all the difference. They also said in the instructions that somewhere around 200 thermal cycles (system operating then off and cooling down) would be required before optimum thermal transmission would be realized. That seems to be true since I watched my CPU core temps and GPU temps steadily dropping for about two months to the levels they are now. I can browse video content and play BD or DVD without any problems now.

 

@ Nex, GPU temp at idle is staying @ 140f +. I checked all the intake vents while I had it apart and blew them all out also. I actually was really amazed that I didn't find any more dust than there was.

@ Az, I blew out the fan, heat sink and vents with compressed air as good as I think could have been done. I didn't use the 2 step cleaning process, I used alcohol and cotton swabs, but when I got through I could see a clean mirror reflection on both processors. After doing a little more research, you are correct in saying that the items I have circled are the GPU Ram. I can see a significant discoloration on the mobo around al 4 of them from the excessive heat. Monitoring "speedfan" the highest rpm I'm seeing is 2200, with the temp getting up as fast as it does shouldn't the fan be running at a higher speed? Also, on startup I'm not seeing the fan come on until the temps are at or above 120f. I would think the fan control should see the temp increasing and kick in before then. I haven't mentioned that I've also got it sitting on a cooling pad.

Thanks again for all the help

 

mrearl - We are sorry about this problem your are currently facing. Based on what you described it could be a possible hardware issue and we would love to have it assessed and serviced for you where necessary. Please email us at [email protected] with your post on this thread and your serial number.

Thank you.

 

Have you flashed the BIOS to firmware version 208 yet? That corrected some fan issues, but I think just reduced the fan speed and made it quieter. I believe there is an active fluid contained within the heat pipes that run from the CPU/GPU to the heat exchanger/fan assembly. They are the curved copper tubes. Those can leak (somehow) and stop functioning correctly. I can't say for sure if your cleaning process was adequate. If all else fails you might try the Articlean process. I see that ASUS is interested in your problem. Good luck.