How hot is TOO hot? N56VZ-DS71

Now let me start by saying that I know this isn't a 'gaming laptop'. That being said, its specs allow for some casual gaming. I have found, however, than when playing games (either the sims, SWTOR, or WoW) the temperatures go up to about 90-95 degrees celcius.

I understand that, because of the nature of the cooling system, cooling pads are ineffective for this machine. I don't want to cause any damage to my computer, so if someone with more experience could tell me if a) this indeed is hot enough to cause damage and b) what I can do to help cool it down, that would be very appreciated.

 

90-95c is far too hot, this will reduce the life of your notebook and could also be dangerous.

Is this for cpu or gpu?

John.

 

Well.. most i7 laptops go higher.

And it's not a problem as long as the temp stays stable, and the heat isn't led into the chassis/motherboard. Basically if it gets hotter than 30 degrees anywhere on the outside, you have a heat-leak, and the heat-sinks might not be functioning well. 90 degrees is completely normal on the core on an i7 or i5, though.. Passive trip-point (where the boost-states happen less often) usually is at 95 degrees. The processor shuts off at 105 degrees.. But 90 degrees is "normal".

If you're uncomfortable with that, what you can do is install throttlestop ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html ), and have a preset reducing the multipler/clockspeed to for example 2.1Ghz. More than enough to play Wow on. I have a profile like that for when I play games on battery, to make sure I don't go over the 60w the battery supplies. Then you should end up at some 70 degrees or so at full load, while the gpu is also heating the element (which increases the max temp a little bit, even if it doesn't stop heat from being transferred out).

It's not really a problem to have the processor running towards 90 degrees on this laptop, though. I've played through The Witcher 2 on it (heavy on cpu and gpu, all the time), with an overclock on the gpu - no change in how the cooling works after a few weeks of that, 4 hours at a time, and so on.. Kind of expected it to need a repaste after that, but.. no change...

 

If your cooling system is clean, and a cooler is not affecting temperatures much, and you dont want to try a re-paste, try below.

If it`s the cpu that is hitting 90-95c , try adjusting the cpu power management to 80-90% , you will never notice a performance difference but i noticed quite a temperature drop.

EDIT : 95c could just be a peak temperature before your fan revs up, you can use hwmonitor pro to create a temperature graph.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor-pro.html

John.

 

what's a re-paste? yes, i'm a noob.

 

The highest numbers are in the cores. When I even just minimize the game, it cools down quickly.

So from what I understand about the design of the cooling system, the only thing I can do is make sure the exhaust fan on the side is clear and that the keyboard area is dust/dirt-free?

Thanks for these quick responses, by the way.

 

A repaste is a process that involves cleaning the thermal compound from a heatsink/pad and it's corresponding CPU/GPU, and then applying new, fresh thermal compound. This helps with heat dissipation.

 

A repaste involves taking the computer apart... not for the faint if heart IMO
Here is a sample video of another Asus computer Asus G73JH/JW/SW disassembly, GPU repasting - YouTube
Skip to approx 12 minutes for the actual repaste

 

It's hot, but the critical kind of hot as nipsen said, you don't want your temps hitting cover 100C though. The CPU will throttle itself when it hits 105C which is the thermal limit set by Intel for ivy bridge mobile CPUs.

As JOSEA said, a repaste isn't for the faint of heart.

 

^ *nods* There's an intake on the front underside as well. But it really shouldn't be a problem.

..um.. well.. The cooling system in all computers is based on leading heat from the surface of the chips into a cooling block, that then has the heat vented. Usually it's made of some copper-alloy, with relatively low heat-capacity and high transfer rate, with as little physical property change as possible - so it can lead heat quickly without expanding or melting, without reaching the same temperature as the source before heat is conducted, etc..

On an air-cooled system, you then have a cooling rib at one end of the system with a large area (all the fins on a cooling block are there to increase the surface area), where the air is blown through. So the heat is vented into the air there. That's how they lead the heat through a laptop - and ideally, you would have low temps across the outer layer of the cooling block, and the highest temps in the core and at the exposed fins and so on at the end.

Between the chip and the cooling block, it's the same problem. You need to lead the heat from the surface of the chip into the cooling block. So the surface of the chip can contain very little heat, and the heat transfer needs to be as high as possible across an as large area as possible. So you have some material with very little heat-capacity that leads heat quickly, to cover the gap.

That's where the cooling goop comes in. But since the goop is liquid or ceramic, or a bit like thin gum usually, the water in it eventually will vaporize. Not because the heat on the actual chip is high, but because when the temperature goes up and down, the cooling block tends to tilt a little bit back and forth, so the goop comes into contact with the air. And then it will vaporize, and the goop doesn't conduct heat any more.

This happens gradually over time, specially when the temps are very high. And three-four years, and you probably need a repaste - re-applying the goop on the chip between the chip and the block - to get the cooling back to optimal again.

.. but good stable cooling helps keep the system on level longer. I mean, I've seen a lot of laptops that just don't conduct heat off the core fast enough, period. I've literally had both asus and hp systems "go warm" once - and then they never went down to the lowest temp again. Until a repaste, and some sanding on the cooling blocks.

So I was surprised how well the n56 worked when I pushed it.. Seems to be a bit to go on, as long as the cooling works. Be aware of that if the cooling somehow doesn't work, the processor will run to 105 degrees instantly, thanks to Asus' not extremely well set up bios tweaking.. We won't actually see that very often, though - since either the cooling works, or it gradually becomes worse, the fan slows down, that sort of thing. The cooling block usually won't.. you know.. fall off the chip, or something like that.

So like I said, as long as the temps are stable, and the passive trips go off at 95 degrees even when running synthetic operations only in the cpu-cache (like prime95, some benchmarks, etc) - then no worries. But if the idle temps go up, and you reach the passive trip-point very fast, then it will probably be time for a repaste.

(..that was more complicated than it had to be again, wasn't it.. )