680M High Temperatures

Just got the P150EM (specs in sig) from ReflexNotebook and decided to benchmark it after installing HWMonitor. Here's the benchmark result:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P20722 3DMarks

It's a little on the low side but I wasn't super concerned since this card is a monster. What was more worrying was the fact that according to HWMonitor and Afterburner, my GTX 680M went up to 90C during the benchmark. For a card reported to run very cool, this is really out of left field and I'm kind of alarmed.

I'm very much a novice user but if there's something I can do to rectify the issue, I'd like to take care of it without spending the time sending it out. Would any of the more experienced users be able to lend me a hand here? What should I be checking out?

 

R-e-p-a-s-t-e

 

After paying extra to have them paste it with IC Diamond in the factory?

 

Maybe they did a sloppy job? Not the first time that have happend if its the case.

How hot is it inside your room btw?

 

It's around 23 or 24C right now so that can't be the issue. I was first alarmed when the card was sitting at 41C upon bootup, when it was just parked at the desktop. Isn't the dGPU not supposed to be doing anything at times like those?

 

Yeah, good room temperatures that won`t affect the notebook.

hackness, got 69C with 3DMark11 without overclock with his 15" Clevo. He got 73C with Vantage with overclock +100/+200. So yeah, something isn`t right with your temperatures. You really should try to repaste. It takes like 5 minutes to do

His temperatures:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/679156-post-your-gtx-680m-overclocks-temperatures-12.html#post8747784

 

i dont overclock at all but last week was getting 89c after an hour of B3. my room temperature was about 28 though.
all games now play at roughly 82-86c as its a lot colder in the uk again. this is still a little high.

this is what i get for vantage score with the same i7 as yours NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P21475 3DMarks

i would download gpuz and have that running in the background. on the sensors tab change your gpu temp to max to see what it reaches.

lots of monitoring software in my signature below.

 

That was with PK-1, gonna try PK-3 this time when I get the card back . I'm seeing pretty good temp on the GTX675M with 68C at stock clock after a 3DMark11 session. And foil mod too.

 

Thanks to everyone for all the replies! I really appreciate it. Here's a 3DMark11 run I did:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P6115 3DMarks

The card peaked at 87C this time. Slightly lower but still way out of line for the card, given what I've been hearing about it.

I'll definitely look into repasting it. Could it be anything else? I haven't opened this thing up yet, but could a heatsink not have been screwed on fully to cause this issue? Either way it looks like Sager's quality control wasn't up to snuff if this got by them.

 

3dmark11 is spot on. you beat me by 6 points

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P6109 3DMarks

 

Lovely. The scores mean that this thing is functioning well despite any temperature issues, so the card is likely in good shape. Though if I can force temperatures down with a repasting or some other work I might see a bit better performance, since it's possible that the card was throttling down during these last few tests when temps were at their worst.

In any case, are there any suggestions other than a repaste? I'm certainly willing to do one, but if I do, I feel like I should contact my reseller and ask for some compensation for the bad factory paste job. Keep in mind that I paid extra for IC Diamond and yet temperatures on this thing are worse than for people who went with the default factory paste.

 

Before you go all commando on the reseller, you should really find out if its the paste thats the problem

One helpful thing you could do is open her up and examine the heatsink, check the screws and see if its attached properly. Or check the GPU fan to see if there is anything out of the ordinary. etc

 

Weren't you the guy who was telling me to drown in paste on the first page of this thread?

Kidding aside, that's the plan. I've shut it down and will let it cool off a bit before opening the back panel, but I'm definitely wondering about a loose screw on the heatsink at this point, since like I said temps are worse than for people with standard factory paste jobs.

I've emailed the reseller asking for any further information so I know what I should be looking for, so I'll check that out for myself before trying to send it in.

How can I identify a bad paste job? Are there any visual cues? Or do you just repaste and re-check temps, assuming that if they're better after the repaste then the first pasting was poorly done?

 

Whaat?

Once you remove the heatsink from the GPU you are pretty much ruining the paste. So you have to repaste. The only way to find out if its a bad paste job really is to remove the heatsink and check if they have drowned the GPU in it, or not covering the die properly etc

Here you have some examples...

 

I was just commenting that you seemed really confident that the issue was related to the paste, don't worry about it lol.

OH. That changes things. I was thinking of poking around inside, but if doing so will require me to repaste when I have no supplies on hand, I'll probably wait on it until I get ahold of my reseller. No point in paying for things unnecessarily since this was their responsibility imo. If they tell me otherwise I'll do what I have to do, but until then I don't mind waiting it out for a day.

 

Yea that has bad paste job written all over it. I never break 77C with a large OC using gelid extreme + foil mod + cooler

 

Well I guess we've found the cause.

Either that or artifact ed GPU

 

Thanks to both of you!

Just got in touch with my resellers at Reflexnotebook. They were very prompt about replying to my email and told me to give them a call, which I did. Mark said that it's either an air bubble under the heatsink or improperly applied thermal paste.

He said if it was the latter, he could ship me out a full tube of ICD to repaste myself at no charge, but I let him know that since I'm leaving for Montreal for uni in a week, I'll just stop by Reflexnotebook's offices to have it taken care of right there.

If it's an air bubble, he said I could probably still manipulate the already applied thermal paste since the notebook is still quite new (~3 weeks since build, only used it for 2 days so far) once I check as to whether an air bubble is actually the issue.

How exactly would I go about manipulating paste, though? Should I be wearing some kind of gloves and/or using a particular type of tool to manipulate the compound?

 

you can unscrew the heatsink and while pushing down rotate it a little to the left and right. Then tighten the screws following the numbers on the heatsink. DO NOT PULL THE HEATSINK OFF. if you pull it off you will get loads of air bubbles when putting it back on. A new paste job is the best IMHO.

 

Thanks for the warning. Cloudfire mentioned something similar, that removing the heatsink entirely will ruin the paste job and force me to repaste no matter how good or bad the original paste job.

When you say large OC, do you mean with an overvolt as well (ie Saltius vbios), or are you referring to the OC done in your sig, which I believe is possible at stock voltages?

 

Well it will most likely work, i.e not causing your GPU to melt/reach too high temperatures, but if you could reach better temperatures with a brand new repaste, what would you choose? I guess it boils down to that

 

the OC in my sig which is at stock. I am waiting to flash my vbios until i need to/other people use it for awhile to make sure its safe. I can currently cap out almost every game at 60FPS with ease using this OC except for the secret world and guild wars 2, which are just new and unoptimized both in game and with drivers

 

I never said I didn't want the temperatures down lol. In fact I'm pretty sure I said the exact opposite, since I plan to OC this thing someday. I just didn't want to spend additional money on paste and any other supplies when the reseller can take care of that for me, whether by sending stuff to me or by taking care of it in person once I'm in Montreal.

Legit. This thing matches a 580M SLI setup even when the 680M is at stock, and when you overclock it beats the SLI setup. Absolutely insane! I'm totally psyched, if you can't tell already. I wanted to push the hell out of this thing as soon as I got it, so the temperature issue was a total downer. Luckily it'll be resolved pretty shortly so I'm not too disappointed.

EDIT: Just noticed that you have an overclocked 3720QM. Is that only possible in P170EM models? I'm into emulation so I need all the processing power I can handle, which is why I went with the 3720 over the 3610.

 

Yes OC is possible in the P170EM once you've got something beyond 3610QM that is the 3720QM and further up the CPU ladder, just use XTU ^^

 

yes you can overclock the 3720qm to +400 MHZ boost, however the power consumption will cause it to throttle. You have to use throttle stop to prevent this and increase the power consumption up to about 60 watts. it REALLY HEATS UP. I put a bunch of heatsinks on it, repasted, foiled, and have my notepal blowin right in there and i still hit 85C. Without the watt increase i flop between 4.0 and 3.7ghz but my temps are down at 77C. i realize 85C isnt terrible for a CPU but it causes my fans to hit turbo mode and that is just outright loud. I run without the increased wattage 97% of the time

 

I picked the P150EM for travel purposes so it looks like I'm out of luck in that department. Oh well, I can still Throttlestop at the very least to keep it maxed out.

I'll probably push my GPU much harder than the CPU so maybe it's better that I stay away from CPU overclocking haha. No need to have more than one component heating up the case like crazy I guess. That and it's out of my hands, thanks to the P150EM issue.

Before any of that, I guess it's time to open this bad boy up and see what's wrong!

 

Update: What kind of screwdriver do I need to remove the heatsink fully? Screws 1-4 came out just fine when I used the smallest Phillips in my tool set, but 5-7 are slightly smaller and don't budge at all (I guess the Sager people did something right?).

 

In any case I would remove the heatsink and repaste myself. I don't trust manufacture paste jobs, most newer laptops I've used are clearly not optimal or overheating. Many users don't realize it because they don't stress it highly or only on occasion and then wonder why they perform so poorly.

 

I'm actually having difficulty removing heatsink screws 5-7. They're slightly smaller than 1-4 and I don't seem to have a screwdriver that'll get the job done. Did you need a different screwdriver to get those off as well?

As for the repaste, it's mostly the timing of this issue that's stopping me from taking care of things myself. I leave for Montreal in 6 days, and even if my reseller shipped out a (free) tube of thermal compound today, it wouldn't arrive in time. Call me cheap but I'd rather not go out to a local store and pay for something that I can just as easily get for free, particularly when I know that waiting won't harm me in the slightest so long as I don't insist on trying to game on my new laptop for a few days. Intel's HD4000 will suffice for everything else and I have more than enough work filling out applications at the moment to keep me away from Mass Effect 3 so I doubt it'll be a huge issue tbh.

My reseller indicated that he'd be able to repaste it right in front of me, and due to my inexperience, seeing it done right in front of me this first time will allow me to take care of it in the future should the need arise. Besides, he's a professional, so I imagine he'll do a good job, or at least a better one than I'd be able to do, seeing as I've never done more than clean out the dust inside a laptop up to now.

 

You only need to remove heatsink screws 1-4, for the GPU 5-7 are for the video RAM which do not require paste, they have a thermal pad, and I'd recommend against removing them anyhow. But if they'll do it right there in front of you, then they likely will do a good job, if they're an experienced tech.

 

That was pretty much my reasoning.

Out of curiosity, have you carried out any foil mods or other measures to enhance cooling? I noticed that your overvolt-overclock temperatures reached the mid-high 80's in demanding games like Crysis and The Witcher 2. I'm looking to keep this thing as cool as possible so I'm looking for a list of effective mods to look into. So far I've seen the foil mod, which I'll carry out once I get this paste issue taken care of, and my Zalman NC2000 which I certainly plan to use at all times. Is there anything else?

 

Those temps are with no mods at all. I have since cut clearance holes in the bottom panel (the removable one) over the fan intakes, and foil modded my heatsinks. I don't think the foil mod helped much but adding holes over the fan intakes helps quite a bit. BF3 runs 75C peak now at 900MHz Core, 2200MHz vRAM... and at stock voltage

 

I discovered that adding to the mem clock past 2200 makes no difference at all with the stock vbios

 

What do you mean "makes no difference"?

 

I se no increase in 3dm11 or fps in games. I believe I would need to increase the core clock further to make use of the mem clock

 

Adding those holes wouldn't void my warranty, would it? I paid for the full 3 years and plan to make good use of it should anything untoward occur. Any chance you have some pictures, or potentially a how-to on the modifications you made, just in case?

 

any drilling or modification would most probably void your warranty.
a model out 2 years ago had a black plastic cover over one of the fan vents and quite a few people removed them and i read on here that a warranty repair in america was refused due to this.
so its always best to check with your supplier first.

 

Buy a replacement panel, will cost you less than $25 shipped. That's actually what I did, got a replacement panel and butchered that up.

 

Hi,

Just to let you know, my 680m did the same thing when I first bought it (installed in p150hm). Would hit 90 degrees on a second run through of crysis 2 xtreme benchmark. I re-pasted it myself with IC 7, and now I can run the same benchmark over and over without breaking 77 degrees. I don't have any other mods. Good luck!

 

That's a fantastic idea. Do I just ask my reseller about getting a replacement panel?

EDIT: Just compared your review's temperature measurements with what you said about BF3. Holy crap! From 81C to 75C even though the overclock was increased? That's really impressive. $25 for a replacement panel is even cheaper than buying a notebook cooler, and your mod does more to reduce temps than any cooler does!

 

@HTWingNut did you get the replacement panel from your reseller? Or is there an online shop that sell those? Woud be great if they do deliver to the UK .

 

Just spoke to my reseller on the phone and he indicated that you can definitely ask Sager directly or get one from a reseller. However, he cautioned me against modifying the backplate significantly, since it opens up the internals to dust and larger particles, which can damage the fan and the rest of the parts inside.

@HTWingNut:

Do you have pictures of your modifications somewhere? I'd like to see how much you did to your backplate to see such a reduction in heat.

 

Who is your reseller?

And yes, but don't laugh. It was a botched job... lol

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...unges/681601-clevo-p157em-15.html#post8792496

 

Haha that's pretty sick. I'm impressed. What kind of tool did you use to make that happen? My reseller is Reflexnotebook, and it was Mark who discussed the dangers of performing mods like this with me.

 

I used a Dremel tool. I can do a much cleaner job, just hurried it too much. Have to use a very steady hand and take your time. Used hot melt glue to attach the grille inside, but put some hi temp tape over the glue because even when dry it would stick a bit to the fan shroud and make it difficult to take off the bottom cover.

 

Hi ppl,
I did the following mod to my back cover/panel (check attachments)

Results:

Stock:
Room: 27,8ºC
3DMark 11 - 61º NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P6153 3DMarks
OC (854/2400):
3DMark 11- 66ºC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P7225 3DMarks

So I think it works great and it (the plastics) didn't lose any strength

Best Regards to all

 

Good work Mental, 61C is very impressive with the 680M

 

Thanks!

In attachment is the proof (not that you requested but for future reference)

Best Regards to all

 

Really great temps considering I got almost an extra 20C+ on the GPU temp running 3dmark11 @ 1037/2550

 

You can add some of these onto the copper plate .

EnzoTech

I've tried on mine, 9mm depth will fit onto the GPU copper plate. For CPU you can use their 14mm depth ones.