All Games Running Smooth & Choppy PERIODICALLY

Hello,

I own an MSI GS60 6QE Ghost Pro(4K) of which thorough specifications you can find here. It sports an Nvidia GTX 970M for gaming purposes to be brief.

For a few months now, I do not now maybe half a year or even more, I suffer an odd FPS behavior which irritates me beyond bearable since nothing worked so far.

No matter which game I play (Divinity 2, PES 2020, FIFA 2020, Frostpunk, The Outer Worlds etc.), via which platform may it be (Steam, Origin etc.), the game suddenly cuts FPS in half, runs choppy enough to kill the fun, only to come back to running it silk smooth again in a minute or so - ONLY TO DO THAT FPS DROP AGAIN IN A MINUTE OR SO, only to come b-

Yeah this happens in almost identical intervals and it's like a radio frequency with its regular peaks and dips if you would visualize it.

I removed Razer Cortex, MSI Dragon Gaming Center etc., disabled Steam overlay, Origin overlay, disabled real-time antivirus of Avira, did a DDU sweep to reinstall graphics drivers, opted in and out of Windows Insider, turned off Telemetry altogether etc etc. Nothing worked.

Before resorting to a full format of the system, I was wondering if you could come up with any suggestions as to how to detect the problem or a solution right away.

Thanks in advance.

 

first guess is overheating...check your temps with hwmonitor and make sure nothing is going over 88c

 

It might also be something with the MSI Battery Boost hybrid power, or whatever they call that technological abortion.

See this thread by @Falkentyne http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/i-just-disabled-msi-battery-boost-hybrid-power-nos.812991/

 

Yeah, sounds like it might be thermal throttling, use something like HWiNFO + RTSS to display an OSD for your CPU/GPU stats so you can see what's happening in real time while you're gaming with temps and freq.

It also sounds like it might be something else running on your system causing it. It looks like you've already tried this though with a lot of different services/components already. I was having a problem with youtube videos (not games) stalling a lot (sound would get "stuck" for like 3-6 seconds at a time and freeze the video). It turned out to be Intel RST. I started uninstalling and reinstalling things one at a time and testing for a day, Intel RST was the culprit. I haven't had any issues at all since I uninstalled that and just use the default MS Win 10 AHCI driver.

 

Hey I was reading this and looked up intel rsd, which I do have on here. I'm a little nervous to uninstall it though since it says the OS ssd will be erased etc Is it just as easy as revo uninstall and restarting?

 

Checked the thread yet failed to see how to do what was tried there. Any headlights please?

@ALL others. I'll check with HWiNFO. What should I do to check temps real time while in-game?

Thank you all.

 

Keep in mind that Nahimic is known for causing frametime issues, i also went nuts for months before i found it out casually that exiting from the app would give me back smooth gameplay and more fps.

Give it a try if you want

 

I've never seen a drive get wiped by uninstalling Intel RST. It's just intel's storage driver and util. The one that comes with Windows works fine.

At your own risk obviously as maybe not every config is the same. If you are using it for RAID it might be required or some other advanced feature.

 

Yeah my laptop was configured for raid by dell for the original owner, win7, I have since deleted the raid setup for the msata ssd it was installed on so it's not setup on any of my drives but it still comes up pre boot and says no drives in raid. There are some horror stories online about uninstalling it though. Only other thing is that for an msata ssd, at least on my m4600, w the os it still wants to boot from an hdd even though it does not have the os on it, it's a pain to "train" the computer w mult bios boot order changes to finally get it. Never had that problem w the raid controller.

 

Maybe @Falkentyne can explain how he disabled MSI Battery Boost so you can investigate that. I don't have an MSI laptop.

 

It wasn't in that thread. That thread was me ranting about disabling "Battery level -reporting-" but battery boost was still active.
Battery boost can only be disabled (removing the power throttle when the battery is below 30% or unplugged) by unplugging the battery then re-programming three EC RAM Registers in RW Everything.
You can't disable battery boost if the battery is plugged in.

I don't even remember what it was now.
I think it was EC register 31-->09 (turns on the battery circuit)
EC register 42-->64.

I think there was a third register too. I think register E3(?), increasing the value by 01 if you have a GTX 1070 to raise the absolute AC cap from 230W to 330W (GTX 1080 level?).
That's not related to the 'remove battery enforced throttle' though.

 

Considering the system you have, I take it that the warranty is long gone and you're left to your own devices.

First thing to do would be to open up the laptop and check for dust accumulation inside the system along with cleaning the fans and area between the fans with the exhaust ports (don't just use a pressure air can blower as that could push the dust further inside the system).

Second would be to replace the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU (I'd recommend using GC Gelid Extreme or Kryonaut - both are rather excellent, but Kryonaut might be better due to higher thermal conductivity... also, don't use a lot - just enough to spread the surface area of both chips with a thin layer).

I'd invest some money into decent thermal pads (low thickness of 0.5mm probably) with high thermal conductivity between 8-10 W/mK (as stock ones are usually shipped with relatively low thermal conductivity - half of what I wrote) which you'd apply on all chips that need them.

The thermal pads with decent thermal conductivity (ranging from 8 to 10 W/mk) are not usually used by laptop manufacturers as they tend to cut corners (sometimes, they don't use thermal pads at all, just thermal paste) and unsurprisingly, this can cause thermal issues when you try gaming (even on a brand new system).

But, when the warranty is gone, its good to invest into decent thermal pads and paste as these are the most likely things to need replacement once the system shows choppiness in games or other software (or sooner if you think its needed and the OEM didn't do these things properly).
Unless of course this is a sign of a GPU going bad... but this doesn't seem all too likely as 970m seemed like a good quality GPU at the time, so it should last a while longer.

 

Hello,

1) Uninstalling Nahimic did not work

2) Fired up HWiNFO and started logging GPU temp. Ran the game until choppiness showed up and went back to normal. Temp peaked at 88 C - not 1 degree higher though.

3) I still do not understand how you disable Battery Boost.

@Deks you speak sense, sir, however, when I had spilled some sugar-free tea last year that made me end up with a malfunctioning keyboard, I had opened up the chassis only to see that digging further into the notebook would mean a lot of work that needed equipment and expertise beyond my reach. Thermal pasting/padding GPU is something I cannot do, therefore.

I guess I'll give one last shot by formatting PC. I had installed SQL and database stuff as well as coding prerequisites during my master's, those things generally end up abominating your rig.

 

Formatting the PC won't do much/anything if the issue you experience is down to dust accumulation and dried up thermal paste (which is very possible).

Given the laptop you have, it seems that MSI decided to invert the motherboard and place the CPU/GPU below the keyboard... so it would be impossible to reach the components in question without disassembling the whole unit (or at least most of it).

If you are not comfortable tearing down the whole thing (I'd be apprehensive doing that too, although, its mainly a matter of keeping track of all the screws and cables you disconnected), perhaps you could try getting in touch with someone who could that for you?

Because, if the machine needs thermal paste replacement and good internal dust cleaning, then not addressing those issues will cause major problems down the line (and you would want to avoid that considering the machine is still pretty good).

 

You are becoming very provocative about opening my geek chakras again, good sir. I guess I'll open up this old boi. Thanks.

 

Okay, hoping to get away with the less intrusive options to remedy my problem, as a last resort, I resetted my laptop to factory settings. Installed only what is essential to keep it as slim as possible: No. The problem ensues.

So, @Deks I have been convinced that I need to dissect this old bad boy.

Thank you all for your recommendations.

 

By the way, is this the Kryonaut you speak of?

 

If you're referring to me, then yes, that's it.


And its a good thing you decided to go in to physically clean out the laptop and replace the thermal paste on CPU and GPU.

Will you also replace the thermal pads with higher quality ones?
If you have thermal paste on VRM's or certain chips (such as GPU chips), I'd personally clean that off and replace it with quality thermal pads that are say 12 W/mK and 0.5mm thickness (you want them relatively thin so as to avoid the cooling assembly being uneven). But if you already have thermal pads on those chips, you might as well leave them, clean out the dust and repaste the CPU and GPU (and then of course test the system to see how it behaves).

And please, let us know if doing all that solved the problem you had and what the temps are.

 

Well, that or spend a money double my salary on a gaming laptop which is impossible, let alone being unreasonable, at this point.

I have never dealt with laptop innards so I am not really acquainted what is what. Just watched an MSI GS60 SSD upgrade video to get an idea what it will look like however it will not really be meaningful until I open it up simultaneously. I so wish I had- wait my TV can access Youtube. Hrmmm...

Thermal pads look a bit pricey at this moment. I'll first go ahead with thermal-pasting only, if it fails, I'll chip in more for thermal pads.

I'll be asking questions as I proceed with procedures in this thread - so please hang around so that I do not spread thermal paste all over the motherboard like peanut butter.

Thanks.

 

Oh, and, another thing @Deks

Would you go for this one instead of 1-gr-size-wildly-unavailable Kryonaut?

https://www.adeksstore.com/urun/cooler-master-mastergel-maker-nano-elmas-partikullu-termal-macun

Please check the table a bit down on the page, it says Maker version's thermal conductivity is 11 W-mK, matches that of Kryonaut, right?

Edit: Nevermind, just bought it. Those with identical prices have no more than 8.5 W-mK conductivity. At this price, it was a no-brainer.

 

Hello I am back with even worse problems.

Watched the MSI GS60 video here:

Did everything the guy mentions until the part the mobo comes off - mine doesn't because it feels stiff/stuck at the thunderbolt port I circled in red in the pic.

I do not want to break the mobo in two trying to lift the mobo off however I cannot see what I am missing here.

Do you guys happen to have any experience with such a laptop or maybe pose a suggestion please?

Thanks.

 

You might want to hit up the GS60 owner's lounge threads.

 

Do we have one here?

 

Ok, overcome that. Thunderbolt port was getting stuck under the plastic framing so, with a bit of forcing, the port came loose along with the motherboard.

We could now reach the CPU and GPU fan and cooling block that is installed on top of CPU and GPU, however, the screws have been slackened (sp?) - I mean they do not get unscrewed, they got eroded.

 

Here is my LAST of problems before being able to apply the thermal paste:



By the way, will I apply the thermal paste over the bare part I will see?

 

In the MSI owner's lounges sub forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-970m-owners-lounge.762769/

 

You can easily get these stripped screws out. you’ll need a drill with a drill bit.

You can drill the screw with very very light pressure until the screw head is gone, which will take no time at all. Then the cooler will lift away, and you can unscrew the remains of the drilled screw out with needle nose pliers. i had to do this on my laptop.

These factory screws are usually made of poor quality, and you could probably grind a flat head in to them with a butter knife lol. Aftermarket stainless steel screws are always a upgrade on gaming laptops.

Good luck. And don’t give up on this. Be careful with reassembly! These forums will get you digging in to your laptop like never before, but when it fires back up after re-assembling everything it will be worth it.

 

There and back again...not with a story that has a happy ending, yet hopefully, though.

We disassembled the motherboard and the GPU/CPU fan thermal blocks applied Cooler Master Mastergel Maker and re-assembled it back.

The GPU fan is noisy now, as in a cable inside is touching it PLUS although the machine powers up, I get no visual signal on the screen.

Hope I didn't $½%! this rig up ):

 

Thread is dead or locked or do I need further privileges to make a post there?

 

Oh, I guess the unit is old enough that the thread is closed. Sorry didn't notice that.

 

Good news at last.

The notebook repair guys were capable enough to wipe clean the interior of my laptop, reapplied thermal paste, fixed screws/screwholes etc.

Just tried PES 2020 and the temps peaked at 77 only - so butter smooth gaming.

Thank you guys for pointing me in the right direction - you are all awesome.

 

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