M1530 Overheating while running Starcraft II

Hey guys,

So I've googled the question of the M1530 to no end, with many people seemingly having the same problem and trying different solutions (pointing a fan, taking out battery, thermal paste, cooling pad), each with varying success.

I've always been happy with my laptop's performance (2.5 Ghz processor, 8600-something nViDiA card by the way -- purchased about 2 years ago), and it's always gotten very hot during games, but never enough to be a concern to me.

When I ran Starcraft II yesterday, it heated up to almost 80 degrees celsius! It ran fine so I let it go, but after about 3.5 hours (great game), it just shut down on me unexpectedly -- I assume from overheating.

Is there a cooling solution which has had general success for most 1530 users? I am considering investing in a cooling pad, but have never really dealt with this before.

Thanks for any help or suggestons!

 

Just to add, I also have all the video settings set to low (still heats up to about 77 on my second try).

 

Just wondering, what is your reference point for considering 80C "hot"? You're still probably 25C+ away before the laptop should just shut down.

Putting all settings on low may do nothing for how hard the card works if it's still putting out as many frames per second as possible. Checking fps in game should work by pressing ctrl-alt-f. You can try to enable vertical sync to cap the framerate which may make your computer work less hard (depending on how many fps you were getting), which would mean less heat. For example, if you were getting 120fps (probably not) and you enable vertical sync, your card will work half as hard (in theory) since you will be capped at 60fps. The game will look the same since your refresh rate is 60hz, but sometimes this can give the appearance of input lag.

 

gpig,

My reference point for 80C being hot was a few different threads of people complaining about their laptop overheating while running games on a Dell forum.

I could have been wrong about the overheat -- I was in the middle of a game and my laptop just turned off. It ran fine after letting it cool down and restarting. The max temp I saw while playing was a little over 80. Is that not high/should I not be concerned unless it gets higher than that?

I enabled vertical sync, set my comp to high performance (right move?), and hit ctrl+alt+F -- said the fps is running around 60 right now. I'm going to play a game and check my temps again.

Thanks for your input.

 

My GPU gets 100c... 80c is cool

 

Do you think the shutdown that happened to me while it was hot (comp was also plugged in) could have been something besides the heat?

 

on my m1330 my gpu would over heat my ram and shut down because there right next to eachother. but ive never had anyluck with this thing running any blizzard games

 

Could be, but also unlikely.
But it doesn't shut down during furmark/prime?

Try turning off Advanced System System --> startup/recovery --> automatically restart

 

Just played three games -- comp was hot again (i have a fan blowing at it), but no shutdowns or anything. GPU hit about 90ish, CPU hit 78.

DuranXL: not sure what you mean by furmark/prime, but i've never had any shutdown problems or weird occurances besides the one mentioned earlier. I'll turn off the auto restart though.

Seems to be a random occurance thus far. I don't even mind it heating up, just didn't want it to be at a dangerous level and risk melting my parts -- thanks for the suggestions!

EDIT: i am running CPUID HWmonitor, and noticed it says my CPU fans are running at 50%. Not sure if that is something i can change or increase manually (admittedly not that tech-savvy), or if it's irrelevant.

 

hey how are you getting 60fps on this notebook? my brother has the same model and we have all the settings on low and its almost unplayable how choppy the game is getting

 

Steve, your brother might have the 8400 gs model rather than the OPs 8600 gt.
its what my brother has LOL all they care is that its red

but seriously, the minimum requirement for starcraft II is a 6600 gt and the 8400 gs is worse, but people have been running the beta. I'm about to install it on his laptop actually. I'll post back here.
although it does seem likely that this could be a separate issue.

 

It's overheating because of this.
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/07/28/blizzard-confirms-starcraft-ii-overheating-bug.aspx

 

Thanks for the help zippys007...heard there was an issue, but didn't see an article that had a fix.

Steve -- to get the fps to 60 you enable Vertical Sync in Video Options. I ended up turning it off. Worked fine in campaign, but whenever I had a large base/army on multiplayer everything slowed down to a crawl.

 

I installed it and tried playing on my M1530 (specs in sig). After 1 and a half missions, it shut down from overheating. I tried again with a cooling pad and haven't had a problem. It stays around 70ish degrees. But the pad is bulky and loud.

The game set the default graphics settings to medium but I set them all to low. It sped the game up and it still looks great.

 

Does anyone able to fix this problem??
I had a M1530 with the graphic drive updated but I still experience a periodic lag when I play SC online. It will lag for 1 min and run smoothly for another 1-2 mins...... I believe this laptop not sooo bad that i need to buy a new one...

 

I have the same problem. Even with everything on low settings I get lag. It usually happens when there are a lot of units on the screen during large battles and such. I don't really know if there is anything we can do about it. I'm looking to get a new computer.

 

Playing SC2 on my M1330 was better than M1530. Got M1530 replaced with sxps 1645. So now my 1645 plays a little better than my M1330, but a lot better than the M1530. So there is not much you can do, but get a better laptop with a good video card. So far the only laptop I've use that plays great is a Asus G73JH-A1 laptop with a 5870 vid card, played SC2 on high settings no problem.

 

i have a 1530 with win7, t8100, 4gb ram, 8600gt on the latest nvidia driver and i can play fine. i avg about 30 fps on med settings.

 

Somehow SC II runs extremely hot with my M1530 too. I average about 90C (!!!) on medium setting and 1280x800 resolution, no OC-ing whatsoever. The curious thing is only this game runs this hot, I get about 75C for Warcraft III and 77C for TF2.

 

Do you guys clean your fan vents? Also, consider it's summer so air is hotter, thus increasing computer temp a bit.

 

Overheating is indeed a problem as your GPU will down clock at a certain temperature to prevent itself from melting.

Most likely your vents are clogged with dust. Buy a can of compressed air, open up the laptop from the underside (L-shaped cover with screw labeled "M") and unscrew the heatsink + fan (the screws labeled 1-6).

Make sure the fan blades are clean and shoot the compressed air into the fan vents, if it is clogged dust will shoot everywhere.

Other things you can do is undervolt the CPU, this will help quite a bit as well. Heres a guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/235824-undervolting-guide.html

Throw some arctic silver on the CPU/GPU too, the factory paste isn't as great.

I had the same overheating BS and now my temps are atleast 30C cooler because of the above.