F3Jm overheating problem

hi all,

i was wondering if any of those of you who have F3Jm model are experiencing the same overheating problems as i am? i.e. while playing games, performance rapidly decreases to like 10-15fps, then it is ok for a while, and then again and again. i searched through the internet and found out that it is a problem with very high temperature. anybody had the same problem? should i send it to the repair centre?? thanks....btw, my NB is core 2 duo t7200, 2gb ram, geforce 7600 go ....

 

Have you checked your temperature with any temp monitoring software? Does it only happen in games? Are you playing games online when this happens? Is the problem only with the FPS or do you get artifacting or any other visual problems? When you say, "it is ok for a while" do you mean the FPS just goes back to normal for no reason and then performance drops again after a varying period of time? Do you hear the fans kick on when it goes back to normal? Do you hear the fans at all? Is the laptop hotter than usual?

If the laptop is indeed overheating, but it only happens in games, the issue could be with your GPU. If it has a heatsink it may not be making good contact. Its fan could be loose or not functioning. You could attempt to clean the vents and fans with compressed air to see if that helps. If that doesn't help you could try a cooling pad or contact your tech support to see if they have further suggestions or want to issue an RMA to check for problems with your fans and ventilation system.

I asked about playing games online above because I have spoken with customers who confused poor FPS performance in an online game with a graphics problem. If you are in an online game with a lot of people, server lag can slow down your FPS. If this problem is happening with games regardless of being online or not, it clearly has nothing to do with that, but I thought I should mention it just in case.

 

I remember this issue being mentioned multiple times with the G1S, where it was caused by the GPU throttling down due to heat. It looked to be a GPU design issue.

But the G1S has a different GPU so I'm not sure you are suffering from the same problem. Check the G1S threads.

You might find some more info on the owner's lounge http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=72187

 

JoeNewberry, thanks for your immediate reply. yes, i have checked my temp with SpeedFan, and there are only GPU and ACPI temps that are really high. i do not play online games, but sometimes i play some games with my friend through LAN, and i understand that it can happen in this situation, lags are normal in this case.

yes, it only happens in games, i get no artifacts, only decrease of performance in short cycles, when i say, "it is ok for a while" i mean usually the game renders in like 40-50fps, but then suddenly drops to 10fps for 4-5 seconds, then it`s back to 40-50 again and so on. i noticed that when this happens, the fan of the cpu goes loud, so i think the whole system is overheating.

i will try to clean the vents and the fan as well, i have tried different drivers, but the problem remains. i also wanted to flash the bios of the gpu, to see if this could help, but the nvflash doesn`t recognize the eeprom of my gpu thus does not allow me to flash it. i think this decrease of gpu performance is called throttling, and i have read about some other gpus like geforce 8600 or 8800 but nvidia claimed it is the hardware problem and it only appears randomly in some models.

i will post more results after cleaning my notebook from dust, yet i have another question. where on the motherboard is the gpu located? does it have a fan of its own? because when i open the back cover of my f3jm, there is only one fan located on the heatsink and there are som heatpipes connected to it, one of them is definitely for the chipset cooling, but i cannot locate the gpu, can you help me with that? i think maybe the gpu`s fan is covered with dust.

last night i played call of duty 4, and my computer shut down like 2 or 3 times and it was really hot. i know it shut down beacause of high temperature, but this should not happen right? i also tried the Intel thermal analysis tool to do some stress tests on the cpu and when i ran both of the cores of the cpu to 100% the temperature raised and the notebook shut down again. thank you for your help...

 

thank you for your post E.B.E, i have found that more models are having the same problem, and i should agree with you. i also think it is the gpu problem, i just wanted to know if other people had the same problem and ask for help. my warranty ends in october 2008, so i better hurry before my laptop dies i plan to contact asus to ask for help if nothing will help, i hope they will replace the gpu.

another thing that i wanted to ask about, is that sometimes i hear strange clicking noise from the inside of my f3jm, i can not locate it. this did not happen when i bought my notebook, but after while it started, it is like a very high pitched noise, for example when i scroll down a web page with lots of images, or sometimes when i play a movie, so i guess it is gpu related right? i also wanted to see if the ram could be the problem, so i ran a windows memtest program, and when i pushed the start button, i hear the same noise again for 3 seconds, then it starts doing the memory test and the noise repeats in like 1 minute periods? i have replaced my ram modules and used one at a time, but the problem remains. is my laptop going crazy, i am desperate....thank you again for your help

 

Is it clicking or whining?

If clicking it's probably the HDD R/W head moving to seek tracks, Hitachi's for instance can be quite loud.

If whining, it's probably the Core Duo CPU whine (google for more info). These CPUs sometimes make it, and it does happen when scrolling. There is a workaround that I am aware of but it's quite radical (running HLT instructions on the CPU whenever it's idle).

 

oh finally, thank you very much E.B.E, i`ve been searching for this for months
i`ll give it a try and i hope it will help. didn`t know it could be the processor, i have a c2d t7200, and sometimes it is quite noisy, but i think i`m getting used to it will they change the processor in the asus service centre if i send them my f3jm? because as far as i`ve read about this whining, it mostly concerns macbooks, but also dells, no mentioning about asus anywhere...

 

It can happen with any notebook model with Core Duo or later, in certain conditions.
I'm not sure changing the CPU will help any (that is not to say that I'm sure it won't). The problem may be because of interference due to the specific layout on the motherboard.