[Need Help] Extremely Hot GS65 i7-9750H (GenTechPC)

Hey everyone - hoping you can help me optimize the settings on the MSI GS65 Stealth-483 (240Hz, nVidia RTX 2060 GPU 6GB GDDR6, 9th Gen Intel).

I had purchased it through GenTechPC and upgraded to the Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut applied to both GPU and CPU. I also got the Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads. While the GPU is running at a pretty reasonable temperature (81C under load), the CPU just seems to get extremely hot.

A few days after getting the laptop, I decided to play a game of Overwatch and the CPU was hitting 100C under load in Overwatch, making it nearly unplayable with the stuttering that was happening. I thought that 100C seemed very high since it had been repasted. Here's a screenshot for reference:

https://i.imgur.com/FZcnJER.png

I e-mailed Ken@GenTechPC if there may have been a pasting issue and he said "Kryonaut is great, however, it's great on thick heatpipes not on GS65's ultra thin heatpipes. We can repaste 10 times with Kryonaut and the result will be the same."

Does anyone have a similar setup as me that can let me know what your temps are? Most of the threads I've seen on here and Reddit say that on stock units people are getting 93C on their stock laptop under load. My ambient room temp is around 24C.

I've been reading more on undervolting and decided to try that. So far I've done 2 things:

• Went to the battery settings and set the CPU max to 99% (this stops turbo boost I read?)
• Undervolted the CPU and CPU cache by -125mV

I ran the ThrottleStop benchmark to get some quick temp readings. Here's some screenshots of my HWMonitor and Throttlestop settings:

https://i.imgur.com/0JMJdrA.png
https://i.imgur.com/DlPsM60.png

With the undervolt I'm still seeing max temps of around 95C with it sitting around 92-93C under full load (after the fans rev up). I've never really monitored my computer before, but I was wondering if it's normal to see such wide ranges between the core temperatures (Core 0 max 95C, core 1 max 88C, etc.)

Can anyone let me know if these are optimal settings for the laptop? I tried going further with the undervolt but each time I went under -125mV my laptop would freeze. Are there any other settings I can change to try to get the temps lower?

I had some back and forth with Ken@GenTechPC and he said that I can ship it back for $35 and they will apply liquid metal, but under load I would still be seeing temperatures of 92-93C. Is there a real point in getting the liquid metal applied if it only drops the temperatures a few more degrees? I don't really want to have to wait shipping time + another 10 business days to get the laptop back since I need it to do video processing for work.

I really appreciate any input anyone has. Thanks so much for your time.

 

Give it's thin dimensions, lack of airflow, low volume heatsink, etc you are fighting and upward battle with temperatures.

That said, there are some things to try. Instead of lowering cpu core and cache together try leaving the cache at -0.125mV and then lower the core more. You should see lower temps.

 

Yes, I definitely understand there's only so much you can do with the thin and lights, I just figured I would ask since people are reporting much lower temps on their stock machines.

Is it okay to run the ThrottleStop Bench back to back (within 2 minutes of doing another Bench)?

Using those settings, I undervolted to -140mV and was seeing temps hovering around 88C when the fans kicked in.
I put it down to -150mV but the temps were hovering around 90C when the fans kicked in.

Both seemed stable, I haven't seen a freeze.

 

95C is 95C whether TSBench or game. Running 1024M again and again and again without cooldown will better for testing stability. After all, you don't game for 2mins at a time.

If your cpu is right on the edge of stability the extra heat will cause an app error or crash.

Also, waiting til 88C before spinning the fans up is silly. Is there a more aggressive fan profile you can set?

 

The fans are always spinning, but it just revvs up super loud once it hits the 90C+ range (when I run TSBench, the temps hit 95-96 and then stabilize at high 88 - 90C. Right now I am sitting at -140mV because at -150mV the temps seemed to go up for some reason.

I uninstalled Dragon Center based on some recommendations, and installed Silent Option. This was the curve that I found online, so I just copied that: https://i.imgur.com/RMLTYEE.png

Should I change anything? I feel like such a noob because I've never had to change any settings since I've mainly used desktops in the past.

 

Try raising it above the surface of your desk. Put some stuff under it just make sure to not cover air intake.

Repasting with Kryonaut was also waste of money, many times this won't do anything on laptops, I would repaste it with Gelid GC Extreme or Kingpin kPx paste instead. You can do it yourself, it's not hard.

 

Repasting a GS65 isn't a super easy job because of the position of the motherboard (have to remove it). Chances are if Kryonaut temps are that high, there wouldn't be a drop with GC Extreme or Kingpin KPx. There may be a small gain to be had with LM, but again, that's a small gain for a lot of additional hassle and risk.

 

Yea, my bad, I forgot that the mobo is inverted. Repasting with thicker paste would still help, though, if there is a poor heatsink contact with uneven surface. Looking at temp results with more than 10c difference between cores it does look like there is some defect with heatsink where the surface is uneven or the mounting pressure is uneven.

 

Sorry for the slow reply - I went to bed. I already have it raised off of my desk - once I hit the 100C temperatures I went and dug up an old laptop cooler I had bought 7-8 years ago. It dropped the temps around 2C (98C when I didn't undervolt). All of the tests after the undervolt (the second set of screenshots in the original post) have been with a raised surface.

Here's a pic for reference: https://i.imgur.com/9rZWHkp.jpg

And yeah, as @custom90gt said, unfortunately the mobo is upside down so I wouldn't feel confident opening it up. I've built a lot of desktops, but never even opened a laptop. I wouldn't trust myself to not screw up some of the cables/ribbons.

I see lots of people in threads claiming they are running high 70's and low 80's under load with the same processor and laptop after undervolting, so I was just wondering if there were additional settings I could apply to maybe get closer to those values. Ken@GenTechPC said that I should still see 92-93C under load with liquid metal, so I'm not sure it's really worth the cost and time.

That said, I'm not sure if this pasting had a mistake because of the 10C differences between cores, but I am also not sure if that is normal on these kinds of laptops. Ken assured me it was normal, but I wanted to get a second opinion as well.

 

10C difference between cores is not ideal, but it is common. Especially on laptops with less than ideal mounting pressure (the majority out there) you will not see desktop-like performance when it comes to temps. 5-10C difference in cores can even be down to work load. Maybe one core is being pegged more than the other. Many applications do not equally load all cores. The physical location of the core matters as well. Cores places towards the outside of the die will run cooler (generally( while cores towards the middle run hotter. This is present on desktops as well, but less evident due to better cooling, heatsinks, and mounting pressure.

I'd be floored if another Stealth owner was only in the high 70's on facory/stock air cooling under extended load. More than floored, I'd be incredibly skeptical. Mid 80's to low 90's is much more common.

Continue messing with the core undervolt. I'm running -0.230mV on my cores and absolutely stable (8750H). It doesn't make much sense that you'd see higher temps with reduced voltage so ensure your testing methods are sound and you don't have any variables like programs running in the background or Updates.

 

I don't believe 92-93C under load is normal with liquid metal, you can find many examples of people having lower temps after applying liquid metal and not only on this model. Personally I would send it back no matter what the reseller says, but it is up to you. Before you send it back, can you run AIDA64 stress test while monitoring CPU temps with hwinfo? I am curious to see how hot CPU gets, especially each core.

It may be "common" due to very bad thermal paste application or defective heatsink but it does not mean a person should tolerate it ;-) Here are the temperatures from my old MSI laptop. It is not the same model but it does have 8750h CPU, so same amount of cores. When it arrived, there was huge core temp variation and just hot temperatures in general due to very bad stock paste job. After I personally applied better thermal paste (IC Diamond - it does leave scratches but I did not have better thermal paste at that time, only stuff like MX-4 which is NOT acceptable for laptops because it is NOT THICK ENOUGH) here are the temps when running "Auto" fans and without undervolt, running AIDA64 CPU stress test. Note the temp difference between cores.

 

Thank you for such a detailed reply. Sure, happy to run AIDA64 - can you let me know which version would be best? I saw there's the Extreme, Engineer, and Business. If you let me know which one and which settings to apply, I'll run it for you. Also do you want me to keep the laptop undervolted (currently at -140mV) while running the tests?

I think I can get one of my freelancers to take over the video editing for the next couple weeks because I think I should also send it back and get liquid metal applied. I'm just not happy with the temps and while Ken@GenTechPC said some things I was suspicious of, he has offered me great customer service so far. I just wish they would have contacted me about the thermal paste if it wasn't a good choice for the laptop, especially since I waited the full 10 business days for it to be shipped (and had called them asking about the wait time).

 

The Extreme AIDA64 would be enough. It will run in free trial mode forever. After running it, you can go to Tools menu then Sytem Stability Test. You can uncheck everything except "Stress CPU". Then just run it for a few minutes and also run hwinfo with it. You should not be seeing more than 10C difference between CPU cores if thermal paste was properly applied and heatsink is not defective.

Here is a Reddit post which shows result of applying liquid metal using same model as you have but different generation of CPU:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops..._stealth_thin_result_of_repaste_and_applying/ this includes undervolt but this is still a very impressive difference, especially since that person says that he or she used to see up to 90C during same benchmark.

 

Perfect, thank you for telling me all of this. Am I reading that right - they are seeing 68C under load? Here are the results of the test after 5 minutes: https://i.imgur.com/qU6dYm5.png

Edit: Here's when it's running also, if it makes a difference: https://i.imgur.com/76P1jwE.png

It seems Core 1, 3 and 5 are really a lot cooler than the others. Not a full 10C cooler on all of them, but some of them.

 

Yea, it is clear that Kryonaut is definitely wrong for this laptop. I would send it back for repaste with either a thicker paste like IC Diamond or Gelid GC Extreme or a liquid metal. And you can at least see what kind of results to expect from liquid metal application.

 

Much appreciated. I'll reach out to Ken and see what the logistics are on sending it back, he said that the offer to re-paste stands indefinitely which was very nice of him to offer. Do you think that the core temp differences are from a pasting or heatsink seating problem?

 

It could be both the bad paste job and uneven heatsink surface or uneven heatsink pressure. In any case, using thicker thermal paste or liquid metal should solve that stuff. I do not have liquid metal but this is what I had on my old laptop before I repasted it:

 

I wouldn't use liquid metal if it indeed is a heatsink gap issue.

 

How would I be able to tell if it's a heatsink gap issue, though @custom90gt ? Should I just send it back to Ken@GenTechPC and have him take a look at it?

 

Really the only way to do it would be to remove the heatsink and check the spread. I know you're not keen on taking the MB out yourself, and I don't blame you.

 

Yeah definitely not keen to take it out in case I screw something up. I'll send it back to Ken and send him this thread URL for reference so he can understand my point of view as well. Hopefully he can take special care when applying the next paste (especially if it's liquid metal). He's been great to deal with, so I definitely don't have any complaints.

Not sure if they made a mistake with the paste or screwing the heatsink back on causing uneven pressure, but I have high hopes that everything will be corrected. Thanks again for your time in replying to the thread.

I'll make sure to update the thread when I get the laptop back with some more tests/temps.

 

underclock and undervolt? throttlestop is your friend.

 

Yes, I have tried both as mentioned in the thread. All of the temps/screenshots that are on the 2nd page of this thread shows that it's been undervolted, but still seeing temps that are hotter than normal (and cores at widely different temps). I went ahead and sent the laptop back today to get a repaste with liquid metal.

 

liquid metal will help little. your laptop is overheating because either poor contact or just too thin of a laptop to have an useful heatsink, or fan not spinning enough? especially if that heatsink might be shared with GPU if it has a discrete one.

if your heatsink is too small, then only way to do is undervolt, and if thats still no good then you need to underclock ontop of that, or lower your PL1/2 value in throttlestop.

 

Thank you for your input. It seems that liquid metal will help, the overall consensus in this thread seems like it would help a lot more than my current paste. Other people that have used LM on the previous generation laptop seem to have a lot of success with it also. Even the re-seller (GenTechPC) said the paste that I chose was a bad option for the laptop - which warrants a re-paste in and of itself.

You can see an example of the temps someone is getting with liquid metal here ( posted by @Felix_Argyle on the second page of this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops..._stealth_thin_result_of_repaste_and_applying/ )

I also posted my fan curve in this thread (again, 2nd page) and my fan is running at high values when the temps are high.

I will need to undervolt with liquid metal as well to achieve good temps, but I'm certainly willing to do that. Undervolting and still seeing >90C temps is not so great in my opinion and could be improved. While the heatsink may not be the best on the gs65, most people don't seem to have 8-10C differences in their cores under load and do seem to have better temps than what I am seeing.

That's why I decided to send it back to see what the liquid metal application will do. Hopefully it will improve temps. Maybe, maybe not - we will see when I get it back. I will be testing and posting the results here for sure.

 

Here is another video for you, repasting GS65 with liquid metal. I know that you don't want to do it yourself but you should read the video description. It says that the person who did it saw a 24C drop in AIDA stress test after repaste. The CPU is a previous gen 8750h but you should be seeing a similar drop if liquid metal is applied properly.

 

Yup, that's pretty much the exact reason why I didn't want to open it up myself haha. The shipping there took a week by ground and I requested 2nd day air back to me. Ken said laptop is ready to ship so I'll update this thread again once it's here and I run some tests. Kinda sucks that just the shipping has cost another $90 and it's been over a month now since I ordered the laptop with only using it for a couple of days.

He said when the tech tested it, it was "3DMark CPU around 90~92 max". Hoping with an undervolt it will be considerably better than that, and also hoping for more even core temps.

 

Got the laptop back just a few hours ago. I'd say that I'm definitely pleased with the reduction in temps. I can actually put my hands against the wrist rest while running AIDA and it doesn't feel like my hands are burning. I haven't tried gaming on it yet (have a bunch of work to catch up on now), but overall I'd say that the LM reduced temps by quite a considerable amount.

@custom90gt and @Felix_Argyle I very much appreciate all the input you gave.

My idle temps are still running about the same as they were at - about 37-39C idle.
My full load temps are running quite a lot lower than before - averaging about 79C under load.
The CPU cores are not seeing such huge differences between them in temps - they're all about the same on average.

You can see the new stress test pic here with AIDA 64 and HWMonitor: https://i.imgur.com/pllZY1s.png

Edit: Didn't realize my undervolt was cleared, but my CPU max was still set to 99% in the battery settings. With the undervolt it was reaching about 1-2C cooler than the temps above.

Much appreciated with all the input. I'm a little disappointed with all the extra wait time and costs that were involved when I feel like this was GenTechPC's fault (giving me a paste that wasn't recommended and the CPU core temps being so far off each other).

I will say that Ken@GenTechPC is pretty responsive to e-mails but his e-mails are usually short and not always answering the questions you ask, so you have to follow up a few times. In the future I'd probably just go with a slightly more "respected" reseller. The shipping costs ended up being the same as if I would have gone to HiDEvolution or similar which seems to have better reviews overall.