Asus Laptop keeps overspeeding CPU or GPU till crash.

Hi I have a strange problem with my laptop. It is an old one and it spend some long time in a drawer as a spare gaming laptop. 2 years ago when I last used it everything was fine and now for no reason it acts weird:

Usually I get pretty poor performance out of it and iam not sure if its just the specs are so old or is there something wrong with it, but that's something I can put up with ;p

Once every month for a duration of a week it has this strange behaviour where it speeds up CPU and maybe GPU too, until I get a chequered chopped screen and I have to restart it. It happens whether I am playing a CPU heavy game GPU heavy game or just watching movies.

I tried to format it but that didn't help I cleaned it out and repasted it too.
I am not very great with tech and I cant find any similar problems anywhere so I write here hoping u guys might know something.

Its specs are

i5-2450M 2(4) cores 2,50ghz

4GM ram plus 4 I put in from other laptop ;p

Nvidia gt520m 1gb ram

Thanks in advance for all the answers
Love you
Pit

 

This sounds very much like a temperature issue. After repasting it did you make sure it can breathe? Alot of times there is dust between the cooler and the heatsink, basicially blocking the airflow.

 

Yes the airflow is fine, I did do what you say. Also the PC doesn't restart like it should when overheated, the graphics just crash and the pc keeps running.

PS- Usually I get pretty poor performance in most games, I am not sure if that's what its supposed to be like, the laptop is old though so I don't blame it for not handling games well.
But at the times when it crashes theres just like so much power put into the hardware that my fps is very good,
I am not a techy person like I said but it feels to me like if there was something wrong with the amount of power that is put into the GPU and or CPU would that be possible ?

 

Sounds to me like you should soon prepare a heatgun

what are your temperatures under gaming?

 

that's an old old computer. I'm surprised you can even game on a gt520m. You should expect poor performance.

if it really were temperature, you'd see the problem in HWinfo64. Go download that and monitor your computer.

cpu has turbo boost, but your description of the problem sounds odd.

You should test the computer with standard benchmark tests.... download and run prime95 simultaneously with furmark on the gt520, for 1-2 hours, and see if your pc crashes.

it might simply be bad or outdated graphics drivers.
If you let the pc idle without playing games, does it still crash randomly?

 

Oh I already downloaded another temperature program before you posted and it appears the PC is actually overheating, I don't have any thermal paste left at the moment, but one of the fans blades is broken(I forgot about that totally I broke it last time I was cleaning the laptop) so that probably impairs the cooling process.

Ill try the benchmarks but I doubt itll run for two hours ;p
It does overheat if I open too many tabs (like 10) in internet explorer or steam,

I don't have funds to buy new fan atm either, as i also have my primary pc I just put away a few euro to fix.

BUT
The overheating problems aside, the laptop was crashing before all the same even if it wasn't overheating. And it does do that now too sometimes even when the CPU temperatures are between 50-60.

Also, I do not have turbo boost installed, I used to have it but it was never working and when I asked on other forums they told me that this processor cant use it, I don't understand why it came on the original laptop disc.

Like I said I do not expect high performance from the laptop ;p and I don't play new games on it, and the performance is poor, except for the moments when suddenly the laptop speeds up until it crashes.

I know it does sound wired.
These phases occur when I for example leave it on battery and fall asleep it goes down and then I cant turn it on for a day, the next day it finally turns on, but the speeding up thing happens and it crashes, that happens a few times and it eventually comes back to its normal poor performance no crash state.

It is all very strange to me, and I am sure I never damaged it in any way before these problems started to happen as I wasn't using it at all for 2 years it was just sitting in the drawer.

Sorry that's a lot of text.
I will download the program you mentioned and see if it shows different temperatures.
Ill also see if the laptop passes benchmarks.

Oh and thank you very much for answering

 

As I stated, you might as well prepare the heatgun.

You ran the notebook over time with a broken fan and poor cooling. The GPU was exposed to high temperatures. It's safe to say that the GPU is now failing and defektive. The only thing you could do to fix it, is to replace the chip, but since I doubt you have the equipment for it and the money, you probably should go with the temporary solution of simply heatgunning it every couple of months until you have money for another notebook.

 

I am sorry but I do not understand what is the idea of heatgun ?
Sorry for being noob about it, I could probably just google it but I don't want to do something different than what your talking about and end up breaking something(again ;p x.x).

PS - I haven't had time to do benchmarks yet ill do them tomorrow morning

EDIT: I made a thread about second asus laptop( http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/exchanging-g73sw-graphic-card.803168/)
I am trying to repair, I just wanted to make sure there is no doubt that I am not a troll just a person with a quite few laptops(watch me coming back soon with my moms laptop questions ) who needs help with stuff he doesn't understand, sorry if I take up your time ;/ I am just trying to get them fixed And of course thank you for all the help

EDIT 2 : I didn't mention it before because I just scrambled a few euro to possibly buy the new GPU for it this or next week

 

The Notebook in this thread has a "non changeable" GPU. You cannot buy a new one unless you plan on soldering a new one on it. The Notebook in this Thread has a BGA GPU, meaning the chip is soldered to the Mainboard. Unless you have proper tools you will not be able to replace it. The reason your GPU is failing is because of the inside of the main chip. The small solder inside the chip moved around over time due to poor cooling and isn't doing proper contact anymore. The idea behind a heatgun is to move the solder back into place with extreme heat so that the GPU works again but before that you need to make sure the solder doesn't move again by fixing the cooling on your notebook.

 

I abandoned this issue for a while and since then I had some strange developments with :O

So, at some point over past two months I realised that I did actually made a change to the laptop though it was a very tiny one so I completely forgot about it. It original had only 4gb ram and I assumed games will run bad on it so before I started using it I put in 4gb ram from my other laptop(so it was originally 1x 4 and after 2 x 4(2 slots is max for it). When I recalled that I took out the extra ram and guess what... its working fine now :O

It still does overheat and it also works a lot slower when I do not play but the card never crashes also the laptop doesn't overspeed CPU and GPU till it crashes either, instead it just run real slow when its too hot.

I am guessing I can handle the overheating to best possible outcome on my own, but I am really curious why did adding extra ram caused it to act so strange ? I tried to find any similar issues on the google but with no effect.

If anyone knows something I would really appreciate the help.

hank you all for your previous efforts to help me

Regards
Pit