W3J too hot to run games?

Hi, I just got my W3J yesterday but I haven't been able to play any games yet... the reason?

Every time I start a graphics intensive program, like F.E.A.R., Half life 2, Need for speed most wanted, the screen first displays artifacts then it black screens and reboots....


I'm think it might be a heat issue.... I live in Canada... and the ambient temperature here is like 30 degrees celcius in summer....


Just wondering if any of you have the same issue...

PS: The CPU is running at 1GHz and the CPU temp is still 57-58 degrees.... the HDD are at 51 degrees (figures taken from NHC)

GPU is running at 445 for core and memory.


Anyone know how to solve this issue?

Thank you


Note: Does the "performance, superperformance" modes have anything to do with this? because when I reformatted my W3J with Win XP Pro, the buttons on the sides of the W3J stopped working... thus, I can't use the Power 4 gear and cannot change the power settings.... Oh yea, I also always make sure that there is nothing obstructing the air vent on the bottom on the laptop (ie, I always place the laptop on a hard flat surface so the feets on the four corner always maintains the space needed for airflow

 

how long into the game are you getting artifacts? an hour a minute? it shouldnt overheat like that maybe only after hours of gaming. try reinstalling the graphics drivers and running a memory test program. see if its the memory causing it.

 

Um, usually, it black screens immediatly... ex. When I play HL2, It blackscreens right after the menus are loaded!!!

For fear, it black screens when I just clicked the "skip story" part... so just when the game starts it black screens

 

Would i be wrong if i presumed your w3j is somewhat to very modified from stock? Including drivers especially video drivers?

 

You can NOT have nhc installed. You can use it and turn it off but if you leave it on last i checked it makes any dual core unstable.

The atk driver is required for those buttons to work. If you used the disks that come with the w3j then disk #2 will load all that if you used your own there is your problem. The source of your problems is not heat it is actually (and i am going out on a limb here) your aftermarket driver. Use the driver that is provided by asus only. Test your laptop with games after you install the BASE drivers then proceed to install your mods which will inevitably cause you to have recuring problems

 

I have not modified my W3J, but I did have the ASUS customer support guys make it into a 1 dimm 1 GB RAM

I tried installing thsoe atk drivers from ASUS website, but it doesn't work, and every time I boot up the ATK thing just gives me an error.

The games black screened before I installed NHC.... so NHC cannot be the problem ( I only installed it to check the temperature)

Yes, you would be correct in that the software on my W3J is somewhat modifed from stock.... as in, I had to reformat and I downloaded all the drivers from ASUS' website and tried to install them... some where sucessful some where not (ie, ATK)

The video card drivers I installed was directly from ASUS' website

Any more ideas/suggestions?

Thanks guys

 

OK im guessing you have the intel wireless driver from the intel website installed, that will screw your ATK driver up. so go back to the asus driver from the cd that came with the laptop or from asus web site. if your pc is crashing right away when you launch the game it is not overheating. im guessing you have memory or software issues. what do you mean you had asus support make it into 1 dimm ram?

 

Who modded your ram?
Try this
http://www.memtest.org/download/1.65/memtest86+-1.65.iso.zip
1. Start Nero Burning-rom
2. In Nero go to "Copy and Backup" tab.
3. Select "Burn Image to Disk"
4. Under file types select all files and point to the ISO file you just downloaded.
5. Presto! After the image has been burned you can boot your computer with the cd. You have to make sure bios is set to boot from cd before hard drive.

 

I would use the drivers off the Asus CD, you can install them one at a time if need be, it sounds like a driver issue.

FYI we dont have aircon at work (central London), and we had a bit of a heat wave last week in the office the air temp was 33-35deg freakan awfull, anyhow I had my W3J hooked up to a Dell flatscreen sorting through a 20,000 image database and using photoshop CS2, scorching air was comming out the vent, but it kept the CPU around 60-64 deg, about 5-15deg hotter than normal, but considering the laod and ambient air temp, it ran stable and was fine.

I just dont get why people complain about the heat from the vent and the fan??????

I mean yeah it is hot (when pushed hard), but this PC has a fast CPU and GPU what do you expect! if it had no fan it would melt.

Personally I am very pleased and think the W3J does a fantastic job of keeping the internals safe and cool and the fan at slow spin is very quiet.

Sorry for going a bit of track but I have seen many posts about people complaining about heat and the fan running, but personally the fan does a great job in keping the system cool.

 

Thanks for all the quick and detailed response guys

here's the full story

I got my W3J from HK, thus, it's only equipped with only 512MB of ram. Because this is not enough for me, I requested a modification to the W3J to increase the memory by removing the 512MB and adding a 1GB sodimm. The place I bought this is at horringtons... which is in the golden computer centre. Becuase I didn't want to ruin the warrentee, I had the guys from horringtons bring it to an ASUS service department... which was convienently at the same golden computer centre. So, after certified ASUS service department people installed the RAM (It was difficult because HK W3J's dimm slots are not together, one is underneath the keyboard and the other is on the bottom... which if you guys remember is why I asked if the W3J had memory soldered onto the motherboard)

After I bought it, I took it home to install my copy of window XP because the pre-installed XP was chinese.

But it should be noted that even before I formatted the W3J, I tried installing FEAR and NFSMW onto the chinese windows XP... and it also had black screen problems....

So I proceeded to re-install windows XP pro.... which does not have the programs ASUS installs... (My ASUS recovery disk is Windows Home) thus I'm left here, with some buttons not working, and drivers I got from ASUS' website.


the problem is that I can't game on W3J!!!... which is what I bought it for....

I will try re-installing the ASUS recovery disks....

but are you guys saying that it's not an temperature problem? The exhaust on the right hand side is pretty hot....


Thanks for all the support!!

Edit: To NZwaverider, I'm not complaining about the hot exhaust... doesn't really bother me, but I'm just worried about the components inside the computer.... I'm a huge overclocker when it comes to desktops... so hearing 57 degrees on a CPU scares me.... even though I know that it's still in the "safe" limits.... I like to keep my WC rig at around 40 degrees MAX

 

HDD @ 51 seems extrememly hot, even after gaming for a while be it CSS or prey which i was just playing moments ago my hdd never crosses 44 degrees.

Oh and im in Canada too

 

60C is nothing for a centrino. the air is always hot. you only run into temp probs when running a game for like an hour or more. if it happens right away and in the same place all the time it is not temp related. normaly it can be cause by a bad memory chip. do you have your old one? if so put it in the laptop.

 

These hitachis and seagates can easily rach up to 60C. 51C is actually average not extremely hot at all.

 

Yeah sorry about that, I was not really talking about your situation, the heat issue just keeps on popping up and I dont really think it is that much of a problem considering the spec of this PC, my mate has a Mac Book Pro with the same ATI X1600 and 1.83 Dual CPU and it runs way hotter than the W3J his palmrest is the same temp as the underside of my W3J under the heat sink and vent

but I may be wrong. I have never run cpu measuring software before, but I now run Mobilmeter and it seems to run constantly at between 50-53 deg (that is running in quiet office mode and surfing the net an an air conditioned room) for an air cooled unit I would think it sounds OK, going by the temps I have seen I would say you will never be able to run the W3J around the 40deg mark unless you had some sort of active cooling system.

and the HDD a Seagate 160 GB 5400.3 runs at 38-50 deg depending on ambient temp (I did note it runs a few deg colder than the stock Fujitsu drive)

How hot do other laptops CPU's run?

 

Okay... the problem seemed to get worse....

Now, I can't even boot into windows!!! It keeps on artifacting... I've even seen it artifact in BIOS....

what should I do? Return to ASUS service depot in Canada? Anyone know one close to BC?

 

There's a small card you should've gotten when you purchased the notebook, listing all the service centres around the world. I'd suggest calling the Canada one and see what they say about sending it to them..

 

Definately a support issue - I have one and it runs games perfectly fine - the performance modes don't seem to impact the heat generated as far as I can tell...behind the scenes it's prob. helping out, but nothing negative or tangible like increase heat or shut downs.

 

Thanks guys for all your input.


I think the problem is with the GPU ram. I'm going to be sending it to ASUS soon.

How did I come to this conclusion? Well, even in BIOS or when I try to install Win 98 during formatting there were artifacting... and I've seen enough overclocked video card to recognize the symptoms of GPU memory failure.

I don't know why this happened to me.

To be honest, I'm a little dissapointed by ASUS, although I know even the best company has a bad lemon once in a while.... It's just that all the other ASUS products I've owned (numerous motherboards) have been the highest of quality and stability... so I guess this happening to my W3J is kind of a shock since ASUS produces such high quality goods in the past for me


Oh well. I still intend to buy ASUS for my next motherboard and notebook.... the thing is I'm kinda scared of dealing with ASUS' customer support.... from reading these fourms they don't seem to be that good....


Thank you guys for your inputs.

 

The issue does not sound to be driver related ... my W3J gets warm but never hot while gaming, feel (i know, real professional) your machine, is it HOT or warm? can u hear the fan? is air coming out of the vent? it sounds to me like u simply received faulty hardware.

I would try installing the ATI omega drivers see if that clears anything up. They arent the ones provides by ASUS but they run great.

I have played oblivion for 3-4 hours strait on my W3J (i need to get out more ...) and i have never gotten any stability issues or artifacts so, this is why i think it must be faulty hardware. Hopefully, your machine is still under warrenty and u can exchange it for a working one.

Good luck! let us know

[edit] perhaps deal with your re-saler for the exchange and not ASUS directly? and if u have to do it through ASUS honestly dont worrie, it might be a bit more of a hassle or more frustrating, but it will get done so, no biggy.

 

Unfortunately you've bought it O.S. so you can hardly get it exchanged.

If I was in the same situation, I would "INSIST" on a replacement, as it has never worked properly in the first place. Most retailers will do this, unfortuneately, you will probably have to wait whilst its shipped to ASUS and gets repaired. I would never purchase anything worth so much "for the sake of a few hundred" any where other than a store where I can take it if it all goes wrong.

Good Luck...be patient

 

Oh ok...I was just relating it to my experience on my A8J I have been unable to get the HDD hotter than 44degrees while playing a variety of games so I felt that 51 seemed a lot higher.

But now I know...thanks