My G50Vt-X3 arrived, I need some help.

After nearly 2 months of waiting, on 15/05/2009, my G50Vt arrived Vietnam and on 16/05/2009, my cousin gave it to me. I did a clean recovery, and installed a lot of stuff to fit my personal usage. Everything go well till now, no freeze, no keyboard lag (I updated BIOS to 213).
But the problem is GPU's heat. After just 30 minutes of playing CoD: WaW, its temperature rised to 90oC (maybe because of ambient temperature, 32oC in Ho Chi Minh City, according to Vista's weather gadget), which made me nervous. I want my laptop last as long as possible, so no overclocking. What can I do? I'm tending to undervolt it, but since it has a T9400, sacrifice is needed. And undervolting maybe not cool down the 9800M GS.
And I just want to point out, X3 has 7200RPM hard drive. I took the SMART ID on HWMonitor and searched, it's a seagate's.

 

Well, you could purchase a laptop cooler that could try to cool down the laptop to ambient temperature. Also, you could try elevating the back of the notebook so that there is more airflow to the fans.

I know that Vietnamese weather is pretty humid and very warm, so those are the two major enemies of your computer; you must have the computer in a controlled environment (AC'd and dehumidified) in order for it to last a long time.

 

In a 20C room myne gets to 79C though it spikes 83C sometimes with or without the overclock and dox drivers.

I just got my zalman and the gpu idles at 43C and havent found the real max yet but seems to go as low as 75C under full load.

@idq000 - The fan doesnt directly draw air, it pulls from farther away vent locations. Best for the over all hardware cooling but doesnt cool the gpu and cpu as well as it would. The zalman does a good job of covering all the vents though. Its not like the XPS or HP's where the fans are open to the vent in the top.

 

my 9600m gt maxes out at 83-86c. These latest gpu's tend to get quite hot!!!

 

Given your high ambient temperature, the 90C on your GPU is quite acceptable, however, I would recommend investing in a notebook cooler as a precaution.

 

I have just undervolted my T9400 (from 1.250V to 1.000V). And now, my laptop is much cooler. Max CPU temp dropped from 59 to 51oC, and max GPU temp dropped from the dangerous 90 to 85oC. I'm tending to build myself a cooler, maybe with a 120mm fan.

 

I just installed my T9600 with AS5 thermal compound and im running 35C along with the cooler. GPU has AS5 on it hit a 2 degree low of 41C.

Might think about doing your thermal compound while your at it.

 

I have two problems at following your advice. I'm in Vietnam, there's difficult to find thermal grease here. I cannot go to a computer shop and ask for it, only can buy some on the black-market. And applying that grease will void the warranty, what I don't want.

 

have you considered buying the cooler and thermal paste overseas?

In the worst situation you can try using a floor fan to cool your laptop.

 

I undervolted it, and that saved the day. I have just started my summer, so on the next days, I will run around the city to find material for my own cooler. I'm tending to use 2*120 mm fan. Any suggestion on number and position of fan? Thanks.

 

Place one fan directly under the GPU and CPU vents.

 

That big vent has been blocked. Air jumps in the laptop through a lot of small vents.

 

You would not want to force air into the case as it would just blow back out the nearest vent. While better then nothing it is not ideal.

You could easily build something Like the zalman to get air to all the vents. Ideally you want to allow enough room between the fan and the air going to the vent to allow the turbulence to settle. Provide an even amount of flow to the vents and let the system fan draw it through the vents rather then forcing it in.

 

I think two 120 mm fan is enough to cover most of its vents. So I just have to build a simple cooler. I also tend to use a 220V AC to 12V DC adapter to power the fans. Can I find one? Or I will have to use 10-11V DC?

 

BTW i meant to say somethine LIKE not with lol.

Should have no issues finding something like that I wouldnt think. People make adapters for doing hard drives which use 12 volts. If you want to take a more portable route though you could use the usb port and 4 smaller fans that run off of 5 volt.

 

But I only plan to use this cooler at home, since it's homemade, I don't think bringing a metal structure in my laptop backpack is safe. And I don't want to share my already-poor battery with anything . I only game on it when I'm at home and on AC.

 

Right lol, well my zalman is aluminum and yeah I will have to find a new bag to hold the two together. That said how bad is the battery life so far? Ive gotten 2.5 out of a movie and working and 1 to 1:18 on crysis. I havent tested with the new cpu though.

 

I'd be surprised if that made much of a difference but who knows. Maybe my battery life sucks because I have a T9400.

 

Gaming would bring the battery life down with the new cpu. Especially GTA4 which runs at 100% load. Normal use shouldn't suffer much.

 

How big is the Zalman cooler?

 

clutch hows the new cpu??

 

Check out the review in my sig. Its the same size as the laptop in general.

Good stuff so far havent really put it to the test yet, I am gonna redo the thermal paste on the gpu which requires me todo both. I think i did it a bit too thick.

 

This weekend, I will go to find material for my cooler. But now, I have another problem. The G50Vt battery is really poor (I have 6-cell), but I can find a round way. The problem is even when the laptop is off, it is drained quickly. Last night, I charged it to 100%, and unplugged it. This morning, there's only 97% left. I can prevent this draining by just keep it plugged. One night, it drained 3%, and one more night, it will be 94% and it will automatically charged. If this happened repeatedly, my battery will soon lose its charge. The 3% draining is battery's nature or the consumption of the ExpressGate led? If it's the mistake of that led (and its tough-sensitive button), I will take out the battery before going to bed.

 

It is the ExpressGate feature. I usually leave my battery out when I am running on AC to improve my battery life by not constantly topping it off and also to keep it cool.

 

I don't think 5-6% discharge/recharge cycles once every two days would significantly influence the wear on your battery.

 

Incase your curious how hot is too hot. The GPU throttles ate 110C(230F). I forgot to hook up my fan and found out something we all were wondering about.

 

LOOOOOooL!

 

Oh, even at about 75, the air coming from the side is really hot. I can't imagine how hot it will be when the 9800M GS reaches 110oC .

 

75C is normal heh 85C is what i was hitting in crysis on the stock paste and 80C with the cooler. Anything over 100F is gonna feel warm 120F and over is going to feel hot 50C is 122F.

 

I use it to keep my dinner warm, but over time it makes the food dry up.

 

I built a cooler myself (with some help from my father). I used all 12V fan with an AC adapter. I used two 40mm fans for 2 HDD vents, one 80mm fan for GPU vent, and one 120mm fan for RAM vent. I feel air blow out from the cooler's surface. All fans work well because the adapter provide enough A to them. But my G50Vt temperature is the same. No drop at all (both idle and max). Just after gaming session, temperature drop to normal more quickly.

 

My processor temp didnt change but things which are not fan cooled dropped and it helped the gpu a little. The biggest changes are at full load rather then idle. Don't know what to tell you though.

At the moment im waiting for the paste to break in before i start taking temps again.

 

I don't know full load since I only have HWMonitor. The max temperature stay same. But HDD temp drop somewhat 7-8oC. I don't know RAM temperature, but I hope it drop a lot because I locate a big 120mm fan under its vents.

 

You can use something like wprime to get some real world at load temperatures though there is a intel burn in app that gets them higher then necessary.

ATI tool will get the gpu to high but lower then real gaming temps. No real substitute for a real game off hand at the moment.

 

I change my 120mm fan to the GPU vent. But max temperature don't drop. Only idle temp drop a little (1-2oC). The only thing that my cooler help is after gaming session, temp drop quickly.

 

Undervolting is the next step. RMClock is free but under x64 u need to grab the signed driver off a post in their forums. It doesn't support half multipliers so if your cpu is like mine (has a 10.5x normal multiplier) then give the trial of cpu genie a shot, I am trying it now its working great.

I dropped a full 10C at load off the previous cpu in fact it wasnt more then a few degrees over idle. The gpu fins are after the cpu's so the cpu heat is infact keeping the gpu from getting cooled as well as it could.

With the cpu heat down the gpu will run a bit cooler itself.

 

I undervolted my CPU one the first day I get the laptop. Undervolting drop temp a lot (CPU max from 62 to 55, GPU max from 90 to 85). I'm using RMClock, I know about the half multipliers, but I see no performance hit , maybe just a little. I heard about CPU Genie, but I'm not going to try it. I just don't understand why my temp don't drop. The cooler's fans blow air directly in to the vents.

 

I'm going to do a review on CPU Genie later, unfortunately its not free and its registration is based around hardware keys which i dont like so much but I am going to get it i think.

The fans blowing cool air into the machine is going to affect things that arent cooled by the cooling fans. Pushing air around the gpu isnt going to have a large effect though it seemed to have a little affect at idle for me.

Pushing cooler air into the case will actually cause the system fan to slow down as it doesnt need to work as hard which can cause the idle temps to stay the same. The ram and hard drives and some stuff that we cant measure temps on should be running cooler.

 

That's what my cooler do. It blow air to RAM and HDD. But the GPU, god damned it. HDD max temp drop from 54 to 44, which is good. I really worry about my GPU, it stay at 85 during gaming session, and drop quickly in about 30s to 52 (its idle time).

 

Well as i have found out the thermal max on the gpu (or the throttle down point) appears to be 110C. Before i did my cpu swap running crysis bench 3 times got the gpu to a maximum of 85C under any clock/driver conditions. Normally during gaming it did not go over 83C.

With the new CPU i was getting as high as 93C. Right now with the undervolt I havent done any long testing but 86C seems to be the normal. If your stuck at 85C and not going over 90C I wouldnt worry about it. I thought we were dealing with much higher.

Out of the box I didnt usually go over 79C but it reached 83C at times and i later found I could get it to 85C in crysis. All in a 20C room.

 

This afternoon, I redesigned my cooler, and it now works. My max CPU temp now 51 (from 55), GPU max at 78 (from 85), HDD max at 38 (from 44, sorry for my mistake in early post, it never reach 54). My room temp stays at 27-30, really high for some of you. I will write a full review about my cooler.
To Clutch: With you room temp about 20C, your GPU temp is as high as mine, why?

 

80 and 90c is normal for theses gpus. cooler is better than

mine x5 out of the box was around 80 to 90 depends on the game now i got my gpu overclock to gts speeds and the max i get is ony 90 to 92c. but mostly 85c

my room temp is around 28 to 30s too.

when i use my 3 fan cooler i get max 80s.

but i wouldn't worry if your gpu temps gets in the 80s or even low 90s because i use to game alot on my dell 9300 with a 7800gtx and that thing would get up to 110c most of the times and that system is still going strong for a almost 5year old laptop i even got the gpu overclocked.

one thing i just little worry about my x5 is the idlie temps

both cpu cores is 60s and the gpu is 73c but that's problee because i got my gpu forced at full speed all the time instead of throttling.

other than that laptop been stable and solid sense i got it which is around a month and its been on pretty much 24/7.

ony time it gets a break is when i put it in standby when i take it to work.

 

Hard to say, I redid the thermal paste 3 times im still getting a couple higher on the cooler then I was off. I think the cpu at load has alot todo with it but your cpu should be about as hot. It also varies with game, normal or undervolted I get the same temp in crysis (86C) but it makes a larger difference in GRiD (82-88C).

The surfaces where cleaned and prepped properly and the thermal paste is as thin as i can get it, while its thinner then the original its still thicker then most would recommend or the manual says. Ive used a brand new razer blade I cant get it thinner. Its about twice as thick as a transparent layer and slighty thinner then a sheet of paper.

From the first two times I have redone it I can tell the paste is making good contact on both the applied surface and chip thermal interface. The first timne I could tell it was too thick the second time was when I used a razer blade, third time I used a new one.

The temps dont seem abnormal to the processor swap, but in comparison with yours it is a bit odd.

 

Wow, you got you G50VT at last Redguard. Been away for a time. But you know even with a cooler my GPU peaks at 94C when I play any GPU demanding games. But Since this room always stays at 33C+ ambient It's not that wierd. My old DV5T with 9600GT was at peak 98C actually (With cooler and Undervolt, and yeah it's crazy blame Vietnam). But it's funny how some degrees does some difference if I play in the evening when it's just like 27C ambient it only peaks at 85-88C.

About cooler. just like any fan. When it's too hot, it might cause damage instead of helping at all. God forbid the one that turns on the cooler when it is ambient 40C... because it is blowing HOT air inside your computer. And yeah I am talking from experience (GPU peaking at 102C is not a nice number). And when I turned it off and just let the laptop stay on the alumium cooler with no fan on it went down to 98 again (this is the DV5T I am talking about btw, rain season aint that hot yet =))).

 

Btw, Redguard. You can find Arctic Silver 5 at Phong Vu and Hoan Long which is not "black market" and you can ask the ASUS warranty team to apply it for you . No voiding warranty here haha...

Since it's located here in HCM it's really convenient. Also you got a good bag yet? There are really cheap and good ones selling at Saigon Square just for 300k VND, Samsonite. It carries my laptop, the cooler, my PSP, the big charger and alot of other stuff (yeah my shaver, deodorant and stuff you don't wanna know haha). Since we live in the same city we could help each other out if needed haha. And know I even got alot of experience with the ASUS warranty service (which is VERY good compared to alot of other laptop warranty services (Yes I am comparing with HP and Sony).

While I'm at it. have you gotten yourself a Screen protector yet? It's just 160k VND for a quality one . I also lastic coated the lid to protect it from scratches but you might don't want to or have to do that. Just me lugging around with the laptop alot.

 

I bought a Targus Citygear , which was designed for 17" laptop. I'm planning on buying a screen protector, but currently, I ran out of money. So I have to wait. Thanks for all of your information, now I'm sure that my laptop is safe. But I will build a better cooler.

 

Can anyone help me? The Global warranty is not really GLOBAL. I call ASUS Vietnam (it's the name of ASUS here), the service man told me to give him 3 first letters of my serial. He said that with 3 first letter like that, I got 2-year warranty started from 11/2008, the MFD not purchase day (he told that global warranty only applied on MFD day). My cousin bought it in 3/2009, how shame ASUS. And suddenly, he asked what model I had. I proudly told him that I own a G50Vt-X3. To my surprise, he said that the G50 series won't be supported in Vietnam. He told me that some series don't have global warranty in some country.
So Khazak, I think we have been abandoned by ASUS.

 

You asked me to look at your thread again. I have no dealings with ASUS for support at this point. Don't know what shipping is like but I think you have some shuffling todo if you need repair.

 

Not all Asus notebooks are covered by the 2 year global warranty. If it does, have you registered your notebook online?

If you've done all of that, and Asus Veitnam still denies your warranty, I would contact Asus USA (assuming you purchased it from the US), and explain the situation. Request to have them confirm that your warranty is global with Asus Vietnam.

 

I'm sorry for being an ignorant retard, but how come it's possible to easily import G50 to Vietnam and at the same time impossible to legally obtain thermal grease? Oo