a2d heatsink

Hello,

I have an A2D (amd xp-m 2800+). When I got it, the temp showed by asus probe when playing, and thus using the cpu at its full potentiel, was around 85°C. Now, when I play any game for more than 30 mins, the temperature raises above 94°C, and I get a blue screen.

As I can't survive without my laptop for more than 2 days, I would like to open it and clean the heatsink, and change the thermal paste (I heard about artic silver?). Does someone know if this would void my warranty? And if it's easy to do? And also, will it be of any help with my problem, or should I send back my notebook to Asus so they can have a look at it (but sending it back means I won't have it for around 2 or 3 weeks!)?

Thanks
Yoram

 

It will void your warranty. There is a little yellow sticker on top of heatsink screw. The sticker says "Warranty void if seal broken or removed". I know because my sticker is on my table right now... I have same thoughts about trying that Arctic Silver paste between cpu and heat sink. I'm just curious if it will keep cpu more cooler. Although, I have my doubts. Inform us if you try that.

 

guys theres no need to put arctic silver on...if ur notebook overheats by exceeding the asus probe threshold....then you got something up with ur notebook =)

Asus Repair Centre Technician

 

Hello,

Ok, I have bought my a2d (amd2800 ati 9600) second hand as a reall bargain and had that **** fan issues (overheat/jam/low cpu temp, hot case temp) Though I dislike AMD (Nothing about the performance, I simply dont like the name of it, intel inside sounds cool) I love the performance of this babe (especially the 9600) and didnt want to change it.

I am from a country where all guarantees are solely on papers and does not apply in real life, service personel is always chosen from the ones paid the lowest fee and as a result having the tiniest brains blah blah blah... not excluding asus.

So I went out for a solution by myself. Read all threads in this site and many other sites including asus technicians posts without finding a solution.

Now what I have acieved so far...

1. I have totally dismantled the notebook to the tiniest bit, hacked ino the fan. I dismantled it too , it was a ac center rotor surrounding stator engine so It was easy to set it apart.

2. I cleaned it with various gentle chemicals (no alcohol glass cleaners first, then mild soap (ph7), rinsed few times with water then used several times degreaser contact cleaner (not the oily one) . I looked up for a good degreaser but as the prices were sky high, so went on with a cheap chinese one which worked like a miracle (Before I bought this one I was using Philips now I will never buy Philips they sell canned water instead of greaser when compared to this chinese crap)

3. Finally I rinsed every bit of the fan with pure water then
washed with pure water and immediately dried it with a hairdryer. I applied this procedure from step 1 to 3 to all of the fan casing.

4. I used some silicone grease on the stator and assembled the fan. (This grease is mostly used for harsh conditions theoretically it never dries or bonds , I knew it from my scuba gear we depend our lifes on that lubricant but thats another story)

5. now the coppersinks : There are two copper heatsinks. One with L heatpipe for cpu and one under the top cover for the graphics card attached to the cover of it) When I opened them they were nearly clogged with dust. I took them directly to the bath washed then applied the same procedure in 1-3.

7. The original thermal paste crap (was gray color on mine) was dried out on both sinks and was hard as a mules tooth. I worked about half an hour to clean it out without scratching the contact point. For the first 25 minutes I used every chemical I had (mild acis, detergents alcohol, acetone etc etc) but could not remove it totally. Then I used that infamous chinese degreaser on that one and worked out like a miracle again. When finished both heatsinks looked like brand new and fresh out of the factory.

8. This time I didnt went on cheap and bought the white thermaltake heat paste crap in a case which looks and probably was produced hipodemic injector needle (Those eastern people have a great imagiation for using one thing for another purpose) I applied it by a plastic card to make a smooth surface. voila ! it's finished.

9. I reassambled the notebook. (How did I do that ?? of course with reverse of the method I used to disassemble it )

Now the results :

1. Fan is much much silent than the original, both in decibel and the turning on intervals are much less. Working wih it for a month without a problem.

2. cooling problem is solved much cooler it is ! Noise problem is partially solved, it is much more silent and turns on much less (dont have a tool to mesaure decibel but roughly half the noise) but still not as good as I would liked.

3. About jamming problem : I tried half diassambled run tests to find out if the heat receptor(thermocoupler) has the problem , or it is a general heating problem, or a software one. Voila ! the cpu heat and heatsink is approximately as the monitor programs say, and as the posts in this forum. But.. the pretty ati 9600 gets extremely hot. With using speedstep and running on 400 mhz I have found out that %95 the stacking of the fan is not a real stuck but caused by the over heating of the graphics card main processor.

4 . why the graphics card gets hot? 2 reasons,

a) the heat pipe which carries the heat to the heatsink is wrongly designed in the factory. It is round at the edges, half of it sits on the graphic card's main processor following with a gap (about 2 mm) which sits right on the graphics processor. The thermal paste helps a bit but still it is a bad thermal contact in this way.

b) the graphics card heatsink is too small for cooling . I didnt calculate or mesaure anything but it gets hell of a heat when even notebook is running idle.

5. What can be done from now on : The heatsink of the graphics card must be enlarged for a total solution. 3 step idea for this :

a) A direct heat pipe between cpu and graphics card heatsinks which can be dissasambled easily must be constructed so that excess heat will pass onto cool and much larger cpu heatsink which eventually equalise both of their heats, eventually lessen the fan turn on times and probably put an end to the fake fan stuck problem.

b) Luckily there is a great hollow in this notebook hust behind the cpu heatsinks head which sits on cpu. Probably it was for the pentium version of the notebook as the cases are the same. You can not miss it. directly under the laptop wih a square grid. It is a 2,5 cm heigt clynderic hollow with a radius more than the diagonal of the square metal grid. With a radial copper heatsink which can fit there and a heatpipe the heat consumption for the present heatsinks can drastically be increased. Even a 5v low rpm low noise cental fan (like the ones used on graphics cards) can be attached there which will take power directly from an usb port internally. With such a modification the main fan most probably will be fully functional and will also never need to work again except emergency issues (overclok etc)

c) for the main fan I did the best treatment and still it is a bit noisy. For a solution it can be changed with a same diameter same voltage low noise same rpm (sky high pricy) fan. For improving the aerodynamics of the casing som modifications can be made (inside of te fan casing is quite rough and this pretty much can cause the fan noise)

Finally, Jamming problem is still there but much much less it happens. and now I know why it happens and have an idea which I will apply and inform you if I succeed


Warnings !

1. This worked for me, might not wor for you .. no guarantees !

2. Bewarned thee !! If u dont know how to open a notebook dont do this at home ! Besides cooking your notebook, you can seriously hurt yourself with the chemicals or tools.

note : sorry for the sloppy english, It is not a native language for me, I learned from holywood movies

Thats it, have a nice and a silent day !

Bluemax

 

Hello everyone,

It's a very old thread, but I thought it would be nice to post the follow-up of what happened.

My notebook kept overheating, but I just get used to it and stopped playing games on it. Then, it was overheating so much (even when there was only the word processor launched), that I had to underclock it to 400 Mhz to use it

Finally, I sent it to the Asus repair center, in France, which in turn sent it to the Asus repair center in Holland (don't ask me why...).

After 2 weeks, I got my laptop back, with a new motherboard and a new fan. The other good news is that my battery was dead when I sent my laptop (it was lasting 2-3 mins), and even though it was no more covered by the warranty, they gave me a brand new one

So all in all, the A2D may not be the best designed laptop (you have to keep in mind it was designed a few years ago), but Asus is acting very well about the problems reported, and made no problems with the warranty.

 

Good news, Yoram. You should post your experience in the "Asus Satisfaction" poll

 

I am very glad to finally hear a happy news story relating to the infamous A2D!
Its also good to now that ASUS in Europe has picked up its game, there were a few users i think from spain who had alot of trouble with warranty, but at least France/holland seem to be ok.
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