Asus 17.3" X750JN (POS), core i7-4700HQ, OK to Run WCG 24/7? Avg 54°C, Rare Spikes to 65°C

Per the subject -


I have an Asus 17.3" X750JN laptop, core i7-4700HQ CPU, nVidia 840M 2GB GPU, purchased new 2 years ago, around $1,000 USD - was a POS from day one - bad Asus power charge circuit design, well known, (and horrible) power on / sleep /hibernate / wake issues - often wouldn't power on (long story) - permanently removed battery, ran fine on APC BN600G UPS battery backup for about 2 weeks.

Then, out of the blue, the CPU temps suddenly went thru the roof. I quickly shut the laptop down, tore it apart, and I discovered that one of the little nuts that hold the 4-leg CPU heat spreader down onto the motherboard had somehow popped out (poor Asus quality control), and would not stay in, no matter how I tried. Didn't like the idea of trying to epoxy it back in, or Crazy-Gluing it.

So I flipped the board over, and kind of perched the nut securely down on the bottom rim of the hole (which is apparently cut to a slightly smaller diameter), then screwed the spreader leg back onto it, and voila, it worked like a charm. Temps back to normal, even after a full day of Prime95 stress testing, hitting 98°C at full 3.4GHz Turbo boost. Never throttled-down or shut down. I decided against re-pasting the CPU & heat sink/spreader, since this thing is such an Asus Piece O' Sh*t.

Of course, absolutely ZERO in-warranty support from Asus. Utterly worthless "support"...Asus throws roadblocks at every turn, phony "escalation", no replies from Asus forums, or from emails & nothing but rude, brusque, clueless telephone "technicians". As an editorial aside, to this day I'm convinced that from its inception, Asus was conceived in the Asian/South Pacific region as little more than a sketchy and shoddy OEM chips / ASICS & parts clearing house scam / operation. Of course, over the past 20+ years Asus has metastasized, and is now fully Global.

Anyway, after months of fiddling around with the laptop, no luck powering it back on, even on just AC (many tries with battery removal, hold power button 30-seconds, dissipate system board static charge, etc.). I gutted the thing, removed system board, CMOS battery, swapped out RAM in sockets (total nightmare taking the thing apart & back together each time), but re-assembled it without the battery. Plugged into AC through adapter (19.2 volts DC, so it's fine), system came right up. I've been running it on a "Smart" APC BN600G UPS just fine ever since - the laptop talks to the UPS via PowerChute 3.0 software, over a USB link

Since it's such a piece of sh*t, I've decided to "make lemonade out of lemons":

So I've re-purposed it - for the past 5 months it's been running WCG (World Community Grid / BOINC client) nonstop, 24/7, without a hitch. I got rid of the crappy Windows 8.1 x64 Home and performed the free upgrade to Windows 10 Home x64. All latest patches, including "Anniversary".

Running the World Community Grid BOINC client, the i7-4700HQ CPU / package temps average around 54°C - 57°C, with rare spikes to 65°C. This CPU's base core speed is 2.4 GHz, Turbo to 3.2 GHz (4 cores), and 3.4GHz (1 core), which it does just fine (idles at around 35°, but I've down-throttled it using Windows 10 Power Plan to 2.2 GHz max, and I disabled Turbo Boost. It runs round the clock, all 4 cores and 8 threads at 2.2 GHz, no more, and no less.

I'm well aware that laptops really aren't designed to handle server duty like this, but in this case, with these kinds of temps (plus I blow out all the dust twice a month), and since it's on UPS, should I expect it to continue to give solid, long-term service?

 

So is this a cooling mod? Do you have pics of them?

 

An unfortunately necessary cooling mod, Mobius, yes. I employed what used to be called a "kludge" - an improvised, spur-of-the-moment solution, and usually when one is desperate. Which I pretty much was. It kind of came to me in a flash.

As I said in my original post, one of the heat spreader nuts popped out of the system board, lifting up one of the 4 spreader legs (causing the i7 to overheat and down-throttle, even at idle), and I couldn't get it to stay back in its hole...at least when I tried to put it back in from on TOP of the board. So I flipped the motherboard over, and saw that I could kind of perch the nut onto the rim of the bottom side of the hole. Then I screwed the spreader leg back down. I was lucky 1. that I didn't lose the screw for the leg (it miraculously stayed in the spreader leg hole), and 2. that the screw was just long enough so that it reached through the hole and had enough threads so that it could securely grab onto the nut.

Don't have pictures - wish I'd taken some!

- Trev