5730m running VERY hot

I'm a brand new owner of the Y560 in my sig. Everything about the laptop is perfect for me (my previous Y460 was a bit small) except the GPU is running extremely hot. I was putting the machine through its paces last night (in other words, running Prime95 and Furmark at the same time) on a hard, flat (but grooved, so there is airflow underneath) surface and while the CPU temps hovered at about 85 degrees, the GPU shot up to 95 and climbing before I got scared and ended the test. Is this normal? I've read that desktop Radeons are good up past 100 degrees, but I don't know what the limit is for laptop versions.

Prime + Furmark is obviously a worst-case scenario as far as temperature is concerned. I haven't been able to test gaming temps, as I just got the computer yesterday and barely got Windows up and running before I went to bed, but I hope they will be at least a bit lower. My previous Y460 (with the i5 instead of the i7) was able to run Prime + Furmark comfortably with CPU/GPU temps both in the high 70s/low 80s.

Is there a way (without a cooling pad) to either improve cooling efficiency or undervolt the GPU? Or even to make the fan run faster, as it's barely audible under full load and I wouldn't mind a bit of noise in exchange for lower temps, especially when I'm gaming with the sound turned up anyways.

If it matters, idle temps for the CPU and GPU are both low 50s.

 

Probably because the CPU and GPU shared the same cooling system, and Lenovo Ideapad isn't the best in cooling in laptops. The i7 would release quite a bit of heat, and couple that to the 5730 which is an overvolted overclocked 5650 (better binned but it would still run much hotter by nature), you got hot temps.

Tried putting it on a decent cooling pad?

 

I overclocked my 5650 to 5730 clocks, and running furmark I got as much as 80 degrees, but when it hits 80 cs the cooler kicks in and cools it down to about 76-77 c. Did u try running furmark alone? I believe 95c and going up is a bit too much indeed...

 

The SXPS16 also has a shared cooling system, and i7 CPU, and I've never had my GPU exceed 80C, even with Prime95+Furmark+OC without a cooling pad.

I also had a Y560 for a few days, I never OCd it, but the temps never got near that high during testing either. Temps should never get up to the mid-90s, ever. Your CPU temps are normal though for an i7 at max load. Either they did a bad job with the thermal paste, the heatsink/fan is incorrectly mounted or defective, or the GPU is defective. You could try upgrading to a better thermal paste and reseating the heatsink, or you could call Lenovo and complain about it and see if they will replace the heatsink/fan assembly or the motherboard (it might be a defective GPU).

Good luck if they tell you to send it to depot for repair though. I had to do that for mine because the screen was defective. The repair should have been done at my house, as I paid for the in-home service, but they made me send it to the depot anyway. Even though it should have only taken a day or two, the depot had my Y560 for over a month before sending it back to me, with the defective display still in it. I ended up returning it for a refund.

 

Furmark is going to push your GPU's temperture 10-20c MORE than any game or program would ever do.

Prime95 is fine for the CPU, but Furmark is really going to heat up your GPU.

I'd say your fine, try playing a few intensive games and see if your GPU gets that hot. Still 90cish is fine on a notebook.

 

True, I hit 80C with Furmark+Prime95, though I generally don't exceed 65 for a game (maybe 70 in Crysis). Even so, 95 and climbing is way excessive for a GPU that will shut itself down at around 100C. I just think it's strange that the GPU gets over 10C hotter than the i7 when they share the same heatsink, where on mine, with the same GPU/CPU, also sharing a heatsink, the CPU is the one that is 5C higher.

 

I know my fan isn't going up to 100%, because I can barely hear the thing even under full load. I wouldn't mind a little extra noise if it meant cooler temps under load, and I probably still wouldn't hear it during normal non-gaming activities.

On this laptop, there is a removable service cover over the CPU/GPU/heatsink which would allow me easy access for re-pasting and re-seating without taking the laptop apart. Would doing so still void my warranty? I don't want to do anything that might not even fix the problem if it would guarantee my not being able to get it fixed later under warranty.

 

Furmark can and will heat up your GPU until it is forced to throttle itself which is why I don't advise its use.

 

Fan speed is controlled by the BIOS on systems that share a heatsink/fan for both CPU and GPU. You can make sure that you have the newest BIOS update, but there's not much else you can do to force the fan to spin up. I'm pretty sure that none of the fanspeed control programs work on a laptop with a shared cooling system.

Changing the thermal paste on the Y560 is easy, you just remove the big bottom panel, and the heatsink is right there. It will not void your warranty.

If you don't feel comfortable doing that, just ask for a warranty repair. Maybe I just had bad luck with them, their service might work out great for you. I'd also go and stop by the Y560 owner's lounge in the Lenovo board and ask them what temps they usually get, but I'm quite sure that your temps are abnormally high.

 

If re-pasting won't void the warranty, I'd like to try that first. I've done it on desktops numerous times and on my previous laptop as well when I replaced the CPU. I just got this laptop, I'd rather not be without it for a few weeks if it's something I can easily fix myself.

 

I think thats about what the temps should be syberia given the curcumstances. You have to take into account ambient temperatures play a huge role in how hot your laptop gets, cant forget that. You have to keep your rooms cool especially in winter when your heater is running all night and day long. Also depending on what your doing with the laptop is going to make a difference. I played team fortress 2 and left 4 dead marathon the other day for 15 hours straight and the highest I got up to with my lenovo Ideapad Y460 was 81 degrees. I played call of duty black ops last night for 10 hours and its newer and more demanding my temperatues got up to 85 celsius. Iv only hit 85 once, this is with my window open letting constant cool air in. Most of the time while gaming ill sit at around 72-77 celsius on the gpu and 60's to upper 60's on the cpu but things can get toasty no matter what you do to prevent it.

I can honestly say though the ideapad is a great gaming rig along with its multimedia capabilites. I really love myn and Im a hardcore gamer who has owned an early alienware that would run real hot. I will guarantee the temperatures wont get in your way as long as you take steps to prevent them like keeping the room cool in the first place. Also a laptop cooler wont do no good if your room is blazing hot from the heater. Just put on an extra sweatshirt while gaming/doing intensive graphical things and open up a window for 15-25 minutes and close the heater!

 

I used Radeon BIOS editor to make a custom vBIOS (undervolted) and a custom fan profile, it saved me ~10C on my older machine (Acer in sig). In my Sager I am also undervolted, but it had little affect as the card already runs extremely cool (~70C).

With any luck you'll be able to undervolt significantly, although the extent to which this is possible varies chip to chip.

Just google RBE (radeon BIOS editor) and WinFlash (the flashing utility). With these tools, undervolting should be no big deal, its extremely simple. The interface is quite straightforward. Its hard to mess up, because you ca choose to alter only the high-end VIDs (the voltages running under stress). This way, if the computer blackscreens due to unsufficient voltage while gaming, you can just restart and still get access to windows (since it will be running on a lower, unaltered VID). Worst case scenario, memorize how to flash back to default without any picture (blindflash). I've had to do this more than once, always due to knowingly flashing the wrong vBIOS in an attempt at some weird mod, but never permanently damaged anything.

 

The only time I've ever tried to mod the VBIOS, I ended up with a bricked laptop. The odd thing is, the brick occurred while trying to restore the factory BIOS, and not because of anything I would have done. All the same, though, I am never going to try that again.

Blindflash apparently does not work on Lenovos, at least not on my (currently dead) Y460.

 

Um, let's get some gaming temps, before we start pushing red buttons.

My GPU will hit 90C+ in Furmark, while maxing in the mid 80s during gaming sessions of any length.

It's a poor benchmark, in a way.

 

This may be true, but only because the machine isn't fully stressed. If a brand new laptop can't run at 100% of its rated capacity for any length of time, not even temporarily, I'd consider it to be defective. If you bought a sports car but weren't able to drive it fast because of some problem you didn't cause, wouldn't you be annoyed?

 

Well, I'm making progress. I modded the GPU BIOS to run at 0.95 volts at stock clocks, and ran Prime+Furmark until the temps stabilized. This at least kept the GPU to a max of 90 degrees instead of the 95 and climbing I saw last night. As an added bonus, the CPU stayed cooler by 3 degrees as well.

I also found the reason why none of the BIOS mods I did to my Y460 had any effect at all. It appears Lenovo likes to include VBIOSes for cards they don't even use in your particular model of laptop with their BIOS packages. Turns out I was more than likely editing the 5730 profile in my Y460's BIOS, which is of course not even used.

I did pick up some thermal paste today so I'll still give that a try later and see if I can't get the temps down even further. I wonder if my 5730 will be stable even at 0.9 volts, which seems to be as low as my VBIOS will let me go.