Can gaming ruin your laptop?

I still put mine on a board, due to heat of the pc, I like to play in bed more than video games

 

This is what I was getting at, I also mentioned it in another heat related thread.

If it was such a no no then why would they psell/manufacture high end gaming machines?

I do not believe any laptop would result in a shorter lifespan down to gaming heavily if used appropriately. I.e on a hard surface with free flow of air and regularly cleaned of dirt and debris.

 

Its always a matter of engineering, if its good it will handle it.

I dont know how the workstation class can survive, while using the same hardware, its engineering, and people do game on workstations

 

I quit using it.

As I said I let my girlfriend use it since she games a fraction as much as I do.

We eventually broke up and I let her keep it.

We are still friends and I recently asked her about it.. she said "it tends to just sit on the desk, I haven't used it much."

She hasn't logged into steam in the last 23 days, gets on once every few months and has gamed less since we broke up.

She for that matter doesn't even get on facebook or anything hardly at all.

So that pc since I quit using it has gotten stressed a fraction as much.

For anyone saying "its safe" I think a question of "how much do you game" really comes into play here.

Fans suffer wear and tear like everything else. The more you play games, the more those fans are going to spin faster.. The faster they spin the faster they die.

There is no real two ways about it. Once the fan goes temps are going to go up in the system.

Sure after 3 years you may want a new laptop anyway and it may be "obsolete" but, lets be real, it takes your average college student 5 years to get a 4 year degree.

 

Anytime you engineer something for high performance,
Your also engineering it to be high maintence.

You can't perform maintence on a laptop as there are no removable parts.

Without maintence lifespan decreases.

 

People will sell whatever makes money that they can legally get away with.

You can buy/consume alcohol doesn't make it a good idea.

Alcohol kills 99.9% of germs yet, people still ingest it..

 

yes you can give the laptop maintenance including swapping parts, if not tsunade-hime would be unemployed and I would be without a side job

 

The alcohol used in antibacterial solutions tends to be isopropanol (and usually ~70%), while the ones you drink will always be ethanol. HUGE difference chemically.

Ethanol is a mild CNS depressant, which people find enjoyable especially when they want to dull down pain / sadness, or get on with a girl.

Bad analogy.

 

People are talking about FANS wearing down? High temperatures? REALLY?
Ever seen a desktop? Back in the day of <100W TDP video cards, coolers were some sheet metal soldered onto a copper plate, with 5000rpm tiny fans, and no one ever heard of a fan bearing breaking down. Ever heard of overclocked desktops? Desktop video cards nowadays hit near 100C at the core, and heavily overclocked processors on water cooling get to 80C. The only times I've ever heard of processors failing is because they were fed too many volts. Get real. ICs can take temperatures greater than what your computer will reach, the structural materials even more so. Even if you use a laptop for 5 years, it'll probably still be working just fine by the end of 5 years. A computer is probably the most reliable thing you own by far.

 

Actually I gave my old laptop to my daughter and well u know the rest!!

 

LOLWUT? Maintenance is keeping your fans clean and thermal paste fresh. That's about it. And just because it's high performance doesn't necessarily mean high maintenance.

 

Personally if I get a laptop to survive a year and a half or so I feel like I did good and I don't buy cheap junk either. I think some folks here would do well to read about thermal budget in laptop design and then see if they still believe that generating more heat does not have an effect on a laptops lifespan.

 

Computer cooling pad is good too.
I got one of those for my old laptop and it drop the temp by a fair bit. I have the ones with 3 fans and it lifted the laptop on an angle as well so more air flow.

 

I've been gaming on my laptop for the past year and 2 months. I have had no problems other than software issues in that time.(Mostly my fault.) Not bad for laptop that isn't really designed to be a gaming laptop.

I watch over my temperatures like a hawk and open the case to see if there is any build up of dust every month.

 

My laptop came with a standard 2 Year warranty with an extended one for an extra year not costing a huge amount more. Do you think any company would offer that if it meant they had to replace a failed GPU often or have the laptop in due to frequent failures?

Sure, the business gets a little extra but surely they would only offer such warranties on reliable products.

 

Good point LaptopNut. My additional year of warranty only cost $79 for a $2000+ laptop. So they must have some high level of confidence in it's reliability.

 

Same, Asus wouldn't be offering 2 years warranty if their laptops had a high failure rate. Of course, this includes the G series.

There will always be laptops with bad thermal design and lemons too.

Honestly, i've had a rather good experience with laptops since 2005. The fact that my M40 still runs to this day and that it was my main gaming computer for 4 years speaks for itself i think. The only hardware failures i had were on my N50 and it wasn't the CPU or GPU, rather the LCD or LVDS cable. I got paste that degraded on my G73 like some others, but we are in the minority (take a look at the # of people who had to repaste vs those who only had to remove the dust from their laptops in the asus gaming forums).

I would say that a gaming laptop requires a little more care than the average laptop used for office work and web browsing since the components will be stressed more and thus dust accumulation will have a bigger impact if not removed from time to time. This is true of desktops too (more free space though so it takes more dust to get a significant impact), if you don't clean them you'll eventually pay for it.

 

If the manufacturers were confident they'd have a lifetime warranty, no?
The point is that the fact that manufactures offer more than 1 month of warranty says not a lot about the topic discussed.

@ OP:
+ Ensuring good airflow and regular vents cleaning (every few months, turn off laptop) should be sufficient to keep the laptop fine. I am not sure if raising the laptop (a few centimeters) or getting a cooler would help significantly in the long run.
+ When thermal paste is re-applied (CPU) and it is found that suddenly there is a decrease of 10 or more degrees... it's because the original paste was not applied correctly (the only way to know it easily is looking at the forums and the temps reported).

Just my 2 cents

 

Side note: I hope that includes the gap year.

 

I also don't see why people keep saying gaming laptop breaks down more often. I got a Acer 6950 and it still runs fine. Mind you I don't use it to game much (mostly WoW when I am watching a movie or doing something on my desktop).

It stay cool on top of my cooling pad. I haven't clean the air vent that often but I never leave it on for more than 4hours.

I also have a cheapy MSI A6200 that I bring to work to download movies and games and is usually on for 7hours straight and is fine. It does get warm once a while but I don't game on that laptop.

Overall I think is how people treat their laptop. If you take good care of it, it will last longer. If you treat it not so well then it won't last that long.

 

never heard of the nvidia gpu litigation?


how ever i have been gaming on mine for the past two years with the system overcloked and it has yet to show any sing of weakness i had my hard drive and case fail much earlier

 

the problem is that ^^this was a thing of the past, much like the poor AMD drivers is also a thing of the past

I dont like either company, I just prefer one that fills my needs in the now, which is AMD, due to linux

 

Fun fact: Linux support is one of the major areas where Nvidia has an edge.

(I use AMD primarily)

 

another fun fact, not if you happen to have an optimus enabled laptop

and since mid range is what I always go, Im screwed with it

 

Unless you're running a business-class workstation or gaming laptop, most laptops can't handle gaming for long periods of time. Laptop manufacturers are constantly pushing the limits of design with thinner models and higher-end parts, yet their cooling systems tend to use cheap materials (ex, heatpipes/exhaust made of aluminum instead of copper). You really have to buy a laptop that is designed for intensive processing to be assured that it won't fail due to heat-related stress.

 

Well put. I remember a few years back, being 100% anti "gaming laptops" solely because the cooling solutions were underdeveloped. Add to the fact the performance compared to desktops was not near what it is now. It's safe to say a large amount of today's laptop overheating concerns exist due to budget gaming laptops with poor cooling solutions sold during early 2000's.

There is always the problem between the computer and the chair too. Attempting to have 12-hour gaming rampage at a lan in a hot room on a early Toshiba Quasi or HP equal... I've cannibalized more HP/Toshiba branded gaming laptops with clear cooling related catastrophes than any other. Period. Some due to the owner, some purely because the product is not designed to handle gaming longer than 60 minutes at a time.

Today my Clevo runs idle around 40C CPU and 40C GPU. Under full stress, 65C CPU and 75-80C GPU. High temps, but again, it's all about what it's designed to handle and the quality of the cooling systems.

 

It is really hard to ruin anything with gaming.

Most parts are designed to shutdown or clock themselves lower if they get too hot.

 

Which model Clevo do you have? I have the Sager NP5175 and my GPU maxes around 81 and the CPU 88-90. How do you manage to get the CPU so low at full load?

 

If your CPU is running 88-90 then you need to repaste your CPU. There is no reason for those high temps in that machine.

 

Yeah, I was thinking about doing it soon. Although it appears almost everyone with this model is getting similar temps. Where can I buy some IC Diamond? Its a lot harder to screw up applying that than AS

 

As others have said it may need repasting and cleaning. Your CPU is within danger levels too.

My mobile 2630QM Quad maxes out at 65C and that was after hours of playing GTA IV, The Witcher 2 and Red Faction Armagaddon. I mention these titles because two of them really tax the CPU particularly. My GPU maxed out at 83C and has never gone beyond this.

However, before it was repasted and reseated, I used to get 72C for my CPU max and 89C for my GPU. Ambient temps are within 1-2C of each other before and after the repasting.

I recommend MX4 paste and the line method. Many recommend Diamond IC though.

 

Also remember FN+1 (force fans to max), and a laptop cooler. Just keep a good set of headphones nearby if you use FN+1.

 

FN+F1 turns off my touchpad. I'm looking at a zalman notebook cooler and I just ordered some ic diamond 7. I took a look at the thermal paste on my cpu and it doesn't cover most of the area, just a small dot in the center about 1/2cm across.

 

Don't know what laptop you have but sounds like it's got a heat spreader. That's pretty crazy, I think they usually overdo the paste to be safe. It doesn't have to cover the whole thing, but I think usually the paste creates a circular impression that goes across the whole IHS.

I think the issue of thermal design is highly dependent on model. Processors have built in shutdown or throttling when they get too hot, so like someone said it's pretty hard to destroy something with heat. GPUs are also apparently designed for very high temperature operation, seeing how high power desktop cards these days easily hit 90C. I don't think there's anything that's "not designed for gaming", if the cooling can keep it cool then that's good enough. If it gets too hot, the people at Intel already designed safety measures to keep it cool, aka shut down or slow down.

My Thinkpad X220 has Lenovo Turboboost which can keep my CPU overclocked indefinitely, and even a hot day it will stay in the mid 80s, which is relatively healthy (cough macbooks).

One thing people who claim their laptops are dying due to gaming might not be considering is that a laptop is a mobile device, and experiences more physical stress than a desktop that sits there. There's a lot of potential for damage there.

 

FN+1 is the function key plus the number pad key 1, not F1.

 

oh wow, you are right. man are my fans loud. gonna see how my temps are after

 

I didn't get to read the entire first page, but the easiest thing you can do for lifting your laptop up to allow proper airflow (and not block the fans) is to take 3 Dixie cups (double them up for a more rigid base if you want) and put two in the back corner of your laptop and one directly under the finger mouse pad. Nothing is near any of the fans and there's plenty of breathing room underneath.

Simplest way to do it if you don't have the cash for a laptop cooler. Sorry if this issue was already properly addressed.

 

this is like asking will drinking diet coke kill you... well yes eventually it will but it depends on how much you drink, if you moderate yourself it will have relatively little affect.

gaming in and of itself wont ruin your laptop but if you over do it and let your computer get to hot it can mess things up. So just get a cooling pad or have a fan running on your computer while gaming... get a CPU/GPU temp monitor and check it every now and again while gaming.

 

Almost any kind of activity carries a specific level of risk.

As for gaming ruining your laptop... only if the temperatures are too high.
Generally speaking, if your temperatures are below 90 degrees C on both the CPU and GPU, then you are fine.
And laptops to my knowledge can easily sustain temps in the mid 80-ies Celsius when under load for long periods of time.

Your job on the other hand would be to make sure to clean out the laptop from dust once or twice per year though so the air-flow is continuous.

Don't put your laptop onto a bed or pillow if that means the air-vents will be blocked.
If you must use the laptop on the bed like I do ... then simply get yourself a flat, sufficiently large and preferably smooth piece of wood on which your laptop will be sitting on.
This will ensure a constant air-flow.