Sudden Poweroff When playing on the Dedicated AMD GPU

Hi,

I am happy I sent my HP DV6 laptop for dust cleaning and reapplying the thermal paste after it had a very loud noise and was overheating. It is running cool now even under heavy load and the fan noise is way quieter. Games run smoother now without FPS throttling and I can safely play at higher graphical settings now. However,there's one exception.

The laptop has two GPUs, an intel HD 3000 and an AMD 6670M. Both operated perfectly fine before cleaning well except for the overheating (without system shutdown or critical errors) and loud fan noise. After cleaning and only when I switch to the AMD card and play intensive games like BF3 for around 15 minutes the laptop suddenly shuts down. It powers off completely; it is not a procedural shutdown out of windows. From BF3 screen = > to complete power off in split second.

I played BF3 for a longer time on the intel HD 3000 low settings and I did not face the same problem; no shutdowns. FPS was a bit lower of course but it was playable.

Before cleaning the laptop this never happened with the AMD GPU and I have over 45 days of registered playtime with BF3 on my AMD GPU.

What could be the issue??

 

Could it be a precautionary shutdown to avoid some serious hardware damage? Are laptops designed to power off in such a way?

 

UPDATE: I installed a temp monitor and noticed that the AMD GPU alone is instantly climbing over 106C while playing heavy duty games (54C when Idle). The Intel GPU and CPU on the other hand have a good range between 60 and 75C under load. The AMD card overheating is probably what is causing the sudden shutdown.

Could it be a bad thermal paste application? Or not connected well to the heatsink or the fan?

 

54c is a couple of C up but fine as its the intel 3000 just plodding along as normal.

hardware safety switch off is 101-105c depending on make so this is defo why its turning off.
could well be crap applied thermal paste or even the heatpipe not replaced properly or even worst still no thermal paste on the gpu at all as its rising almost instantly (yes weve had one report of this in the last month).

which software are you using to monitor the temps. lots available in my sig below.

i would defo get onto HP support.

 

Such high temps on the GPU sounds like a bad paste job, overheating beyond a safe point. You should check it out because it's not normal to get temps that high. The Integrated GPU is on the same die as the CPU so if that had a good pastejob, then it will run cool.

The dedicated GPU might have received a bad paste job, or the heatsink is not properly sitting in place.

It can also be that your fan is not engaging? You said the fan remains silent now? it could explain why temps are rising so high too.

 

Problem Solved, Laptop Like New. Even better with my tweaks.

It was a mix of bad paste job and improper connection of the AMD card to the heatsink. I made the repair shop disassemble the laptop and do the whole thing again with extra care. Now to the good news.

Laptop is HP DV6:
CPU: i7-2630
RAM:8GB
GPU: Intel HD 3000 + AMD 6770M
Windows 7 64bit

1- Fan Noise: Extremely quiet. Naturally the RPM increases under heavy load but even then it is very manageable with headphones on. The difference from before is unbelievable. It used to throttle just by using the browser on flash based sites like gmail and youtube. Gaming was a recipe for major Headache. Not anymore.

2- Temps: CPU idles at low 50s (degrees C) and goes up to 70-75 max under heaviest load. Only hitting one of the cores.
The AMD 6770M is 47C at windows startup before any gaming.
During gaming it varies between a maximum of 65C to 75C depending on the game. Not more. Used to be 80+ before cleaning, and 100+ after cleaning but with the bad paste job and improper installation. Now it caps at 75C-77C no matter what you throw at it. I have not tried BF4 or any AAA 2014 titles.

3- FPS: Before cleaning the dust, BF3, and at 800x600 and all settings LOW, used to vary by the second between 22 and 39 fps. It was playable at ugly quality. Fan was loud.
When done with the cleaning and thermal paste, I benchmarked it against the SAME Settings and it jumped to a surprising level: 75-100 FPS, without throttling or sudden fps dips. Now I set all settings to high except shadows and AA and resolution back to 1366x720 and it plays between 35-45FPS. That was impossible to play at before cleaning. All older games including ARMA 2 are very smooth at high-very high settings.

I am happy with my HP DV6 now it is like new, i will postpone buying the MSI GT72 or the ASUS equivalent till next year.

Remember to clean your laptops every 6-8 months in order to refresh its performance and give a boost to its lifetime.

Note: Cleaning = unscrewing the fan, cleaning it of dust manually and make sure the blades are not damaged + cleaning the heatsink using an air pump + reapplying the thermal paste at the heatsink.
When done make sure the tech guy installs the heatsink and fan exactly into place with a 1mm precision using the spring screws (or other connections) as any deviation might lead to immediate overheating of the components, even if from a top to bottom perspective everything appears to be falling into place.