Intel HD 3000 & GT 555M causing flickering/black screen

Hi all,

I have an Asus N55-SF laptop that has a Intel HD 3000 and Nvidia GT 555M GPU. It has some very strange behavior at the moment.

The problem with the screen flickering/going black started a few months back. As part of trying to find a solution for this, I found out that the laptop was suffering heat problems. The CPU was idling on the desktop at 96° and the GPU would hit 99° as soon as a 3D game was started. This has been solved by blowing air through the vents and now the laptop is performing very well.



However, the screen flickering, or going black for a period of time continues. Here is a video of the problem:

The start of the video shows the screen black apart from some white lines on the left hand side of the screen. I move the laptop around and it has no effect. Then screen responds though when I move the mouse and I get the picture again. There is no way to 100% reproduce the issue, but starting Chrome and going to a youtube video will often cause the screen to flicker and then go black as shown in the video.

I do NOT get the problem of flickering if I start windows in Safe Mode. It is possible to stop the flickering by picking up the laptop at the front of the laptop.. however I think this action just presses some buttons on the laptops mouse. And it is not a hardware problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STzMgq_p0gc

I have updated the Intel HD driver to the latest from the Intel website. I have turned off all power saving options from the driver. I have then downgraded the driver to the driver from the Asus website. I have updated to the latest Nvidia driver, then upgraded to the latest BETA driver. I have not downgraded the driver as yet.

Can anyone help me? Has anyone seen this problem before? How can I resolve it? Is a OS re-install the next option?

Thanks for any help!

 

welcome to nbr

OUCH 96-99c now that is not a bit but a lot toasty.

when you say you blew through the vents did you take the base off or blow from the outside.
laptops need a good clean out every 3-6 months with compressed air from inside the laptop base. blowing from the outside is just moving dust around the inside and could be quite dangerous if a lump of dust rests on a very hot part as there could be a risk of it catching fire.
also sounds like you could do with repasting the thermal contacts of the cpu and gpu with new thermal paste.

lines on screen are the first sign of a dying video card. below is a dead card.

unless you live in a volcano or oven your idle temps should be round about the 50c mark.
laptops will turn off at 100-101c to protect the hardware so you are very close to that.

i dont know anything about asus laptops layout inside so hopefully someone else will be able to advise but even though you now have lower temps they will still start creeping up again so a thorough cleanout of dust is defo the first step.

 

Thanks for the tips. I opened it up and blew from the inside out, and so know the temperatures are good and stable. The general performance of the laptop is excellent and back to where it should be.

I have left the laptop on for a few hours now and I am not getting the screen flickering. The screen flickering is very sporadic and mostly occurs when I have opened up the lid or rebooted the machine... very weird.

So the temps are fine, but the flickering still occasionally occurs. Any other ideas?

 

I think your screen cable might be loose or damaged.. I had that with my hp too and this is a sympton of it..

 

Ahhh ok. It's weird though that it happens when the laptop is perfectly still. I might have a go at reattaching the cable. Does anyone know the best way of doing it? Or should I ask on the Asus sub forum?

 

as mentioned it could be the opening and shutting of the lid as the cable runs from the motherboard upto the screen.
might be worth seeing if the same thing occurs with the screen at slightly different angles.

 

So it might be heat after all. I have been playing around with what causes the screen to go black, and I have found a bit of a pattern. It is when I make the HD 3000 chip work with general desktop work. So when I view google maps or youtube.. the temperature of the HD card spikes to 70°. Is that too high? It seems high... the chip idles at around 54°.



Could it be that I need to reapply some cooling paste?

 

my average with HD4000 is 60c today just browsing the forums but it is very very warm in my room today. ive never really checked on my HD graphics before as its normaly my 680gtx that gets toasty.

i dont think you can repaste the intel graphics as its part of the motherboard. its only dedicated graphics cards that need thermal paste.
what temperatures are you getting with your cpu. try core temps which can be found in my sig below.

 

CPU temps look good:

 

The Intel HD 3000 is integrated into the CPU die, and not part of the motherboard. I don't know how much faith I would put into the HD 3000 temperature, because no matter what the sensor will be picking up extra heat from the processor cores, as they are quite literally right beside the IGPU.

This was actually my first guess as well. To really diagnose this, plug the laptop into an external monitor and see if you get the same issues. I have a 3 year old Toshiba that had to get its screen changed twice (both under warranty thankfully). The first time the cable went bad, all the black would display as red and it was incredibly annoying. When I got a warranty replacement, that panel's cable failed within 1 week and nothing would show on the screen. Thankfully the second replacement fixed all the problems and I haven't had an issue since.

 

see, shows you how much i know about the intel graphics and where they are situated

 

hi there
I got exactly the same problem on a N55sf laptop.
this laptop hadn't got cleaned up until last year that I did it and I also reapplyed thermal paste. the temps had decreased to a reasonable level. but now after a year this weird flickering is happening.
I did some investigations and I found out the problem is definitely (IMO) with Intel HD graphic temperature. it idles at around 55 and no flickers happen then. after i put CPU or FPU under stress, Intel HD temp jumps above 78 so fast and flickers show up. if I let it go on it can reach 95 or more.

so do you think the Intel HD graphics of the laptop is defected now? is there a way to fix it or the CPU just needs to be replaced?
Can I completely disable Intel HD and use only the GT 555m? I've tried to do that with device manager but the Intel HD was still working and causing the flickers.

Regards.