Another Asus g50vt user with questions

ok since i cant find any of the good experts here that have contact info, please if someone could PM me with their msn or something, i have a list of questions and want to figure out my upgrade options and concerns. Please help i am new at upgrading.

CPU/ Video card/ Memory / Fan all things i want to upgrade.currently have a

asus g50vt-x5 -
NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS
System RAM 4.0 GB
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7450 @ 2.13GHz
factory fan

running win 7 ultimate 64bit

I do not know what overclocking is or anything with programs to reduce or improve speed.. but my keyboard does get hot when im gaming ( WoW, Diablo II, Hellgate:london ) i cant run the games on max settings without FPS lag, so i figured id get the folllowing unless convinced/learn better


Intel core duo T9600
8gb ram 2x 4gb sticks ( debating maybe 6gb )
( better way to cool down, the laptop i have doesnt have a bottom vent, its fake.. ) figured better fan/cooling system
better graphics card, was tempted to "flash my 9800m gs" or buy the 260m.

please contact me asap.

 

Try taking the bottom panel off/ remove the fan and heatsink. Give it a good cleaning, that should help drop the temps.

 

You should look into an E8445=T9900. I have the E8445 and boy do I see a difference. Just make sure you get the E0 version which runs tons cooler. I hade the P7450 and OC'd to 2.5ghz. I was getting around 51-55c idle temps and max 80c on full load. I was worried that upgrading to the E8445 my temps would get higher. After repasting a second time on my E8445 i was getting 39-44c!! Lots cooler and waaayy faster. Something I can see and feel. Its also tons cheaper than the T9600 and T9900. I would say to give the E chips a look at. On the ram, if you dont use more than 4gb under your resources, you would be wasting money. You will not notice a speed difference.

 

can you link me the maker? also what about my heating problems, heats up... and my graphics card the 260m is 250 on ebay.

 

Investing in a CPU upgrade may benefit a few games(like WoW and RTS games like Starcraft 2), but most other games will see little to no improvement in FPS. If you do lots of CPU-intensive work like encoding/decoding video, 3D rendering, a CPU upgrade is also worth it.

About RAM upgrade, have you checked your RAM usage during your daily use? 4GB should be enough for most common folk, anyway check your RAM usage, if it doesn't run low, there is no need to put more in there.

I would strongly advise against upgrading the 9800M gs to 260M for a number of good reasons:

First, the performance you gain from the upgrade isn't that great, expect an average of 15% boost in FPS.

Second, the 260M will most definitely run VERY HOT in your G50 and unless you are planning to do a complete overhaul of your cooling system, you won't be able to handle the heat coming from 260M. A lot of G50vt users who upgraded to the 260M reported 90-100 C or even higher temp of their 260M while under load.

Last but certainly not the least, the upgrade cost just ain't worth it, save your 250$ and put it towards your next computer. For around 1000$, you can get quite a capable gaming laptop that will outperform a G50vt by a landslide.

So my advice? Save your money and overclock both your CPU and GPU, p7450 should be able to run at 2.5Ghz stably no problem and try your luck flashing your 9800M gs vBIOS to 9800M gts, if it works, you get some free performance boost, if it doesn't work stably at 9800mGTS clocks, simply find the best overclock speed your 9800M gs can handle.

And somethings you might want to consider doing to keep your CPU/GPU running cool: give your heatsink and fan a thorough cleanup with compressed air can like Joker mentioned, change the thermal paste of your CPU/GPU to something better like ICD-7.

 

Thank you, i have figured out what im going to do and want your opinions...

upgrading 4gb to 8gb ( debating still... i heard u need to pair ur ram but going to double check that if it is the case i might not spend the money to goto 8gb, if i can goto 6gb i will )
installing a 2nd harddrive
youtubed a "customized vent soulition" also putting the g60 fan in the g50vt-x5 ( 60 has higher speeds for better flow and i dont care about noise )
trying to flash my 9800m to 9800m gts
found the exxxx processor for 130 bucks thats 3.03ghz
finding a way to get a better cooling pad

 

Well, more HDD space never hurts, and if you constantly run low on RAM, more does help. And one more thing, you are gonna need a HDD caddy to install the second HDD as Asus didn't include a spare one on G50 models.

About the cooling mod you mentioned, I believe it's a drill job on the backpanel of laptop, I personally did it with my G50 and it works great, definitely do it if you don't mind having some holes on your backpanel! And a faster fan is always helpful.

I am still against a CPU upgrade as the 9800M gs will always be your bottleneck of performance, as far as gaming is concerned. You may see a fps gain in WoW and VERY few other games with a faster CPU, but for the VAST MAJORITY of the games on the market, you will see no difference at all. I upgraded my P8400 to X9100 because I do a lot of PS2/Wii emulations, and rendering work also, these are things that could benefit MOST from a CPU upgrade, for general PC gaming, I don't see a difference in all games I play from the CPU upgrade, not something noticeable really, speaking from personal experience.

 

i need a min 2.8ghz anyways for D3 when it releases so why not, the HDD it had a spare hd space if thats what u mean, what about the memory can u use unpaird sticks ( 4/2) or has to be 4/4

 

Well, my suggestion is given, that's said you will see very little benefit from a CPU upgrade for gaming. (personal experience going from 2.26ghz p8400 to 3.33ghz x9100). Ask around the forum and see if they agree with this, unless you got a GPU powerhouse like 280M SLI or 4870 crossfire, a CPU upgrade ain't going to help your fps drastically.

The HDD caddy I was talking about is this: Hard Drive Caddy
You are going to need one if you want to add a second HDD. About RAM sticks, you can use unpaired sticks as long as they are both DDR2.

 

alrighty ill grab that, im just gonna do more ram and try and give the vid card 2gb of the ram im putting it since im going to flash the card instead spend 250 for the 260m. Thx broski for all your help/advice, found a guy to install everything for only 80bucks so total cost is 450 to upgrade my laptop to this

8gb ram/ 3.03ghz Exxxx processor / new fan / new 320gb hd for total 640gb / vaild copy of win 7 pro ( mines cracked atm so cant update ) / flashed 9800m gs to 9800m gts

 

Some threads you'll find useful:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...m/610379-asus-g50vt-upgrades-please-help.html

CPU Upgrades:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...vx-rx05-cpu-upgrade-question.html#post7029357
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/550790-g51vx-new-cpu-again.html

E8x35 CPUs:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-upgrades/599169-intel-e8435.html#post7763209

260m (no fan control or HDMI audio):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/446885-asus-g50-260m-swap-procedure.html

EDIT: Take care when choosing an E8x35 CPU. The C0 stepping ones run very hot, especially at OC. See the above threads.

 

well i think i made the mistake of getting the CO of e8435.... i might purchase a EO but heres my thing... i dont OC or nothing i just play my games without messing with anything, i am worried about the temp though anyone have ideas how i can reduce it? im going to go get a zalmann cooler

 

See how your temps are first before purchasing more stuff! A stock (not OC'd) E8435 with a 9800m GS will be warm but probably not too hot.

 

ok so these are my temps... currently with only 4 web browsers open
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

all i did was upgrade my ram to 6gb, put in the new processor, installed fresh of win 7 pro 64bit, drilled out the fake fan plate and made a vent along with holes along the copper thingy so it can breath, put in 4 heat sinks over the vid card, havent done the cpu yet.. i might have not put the thermal paste on properly i think... do these temps look normal for just web surfing?

i have a zalman cooler aswell..

 

Those are ice cold. Looks great!

 

ok so i downloaded runes of magic game and just loaded it and was creating my toon when i checked my temps, keep in mind when i s/s the temps i had just closed them but those temps they stayed around the max temps entire play time of about 5minutes... i dont want them to be that high for only 5 minutes... i plan on gaming for hours soon..

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

 

101C is a bit high... Your CPU temps look great but the GPU temp is unsettling... Perhaps you could look into undervolting or something if you have already repasted the GPU?

 

i added a few heat sinks, ill snap some pictures in just a minute but i dont know what you mean by repasting? the heat sinks had a stinky thing on the bottom and i just put them on, care to guide me through undervolting and repaste?

 

With repasting it's the same process as when you replaced the CPU and put thermal paste on it. However there are thermal pads on the GPU memory that must remain intact (they're squishy and easily tear, so just be careful removing the heatsink). You can keep your copper blocks on (I assume that's what you mean by extra heatsinks) but unscrew the CPU and GPU heatsinks, apply thermal paste to the silicon parts (the CPU and GPU dies themselves, not the GPU memory chips), and screw the heatsinks back on. Repasting guides are more common than undervolting guides.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...11600-my-repaste-experience-pics-success.html
http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient...pw.r_cp.&fp=90915d3b48c92326&biw=1680&bih=900

Undervolting is a kind of advanced modification to your GPU's video BIOS. If you're not comfortable risking your card/bricking your laptop it's not worth it, but you can try reading this thread from a little while ago: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/412244-g50vt-undervolting-9800m-gs.html

You'll need a program called nibitor to edit the voltages and a bootable DOS flash drive to update the BIOS. There are several guides floating around NBR on how to do it. Here are other semirelevant threads:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/357807-guide-flash-9800m-gs-gts.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ga-bios-modification-flash-restore-guide.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...s/393228-93c-hot-9800m-gs-while-gaming-2.html

Do only what you're comfortable with and understand completely! Good luck!

 

ok so i was taking off the metal heat sink thing for the CPU, the first time there was a blue pad type thing covering the 2nd block thingy.... it remained on the heat sink... well now its on the block thingy so i cant repaste that 1... and i cant figure out how to get the GPU heat sink off..

 

ok edit, so i repasted and yeah it still went to 100c and i wasnt even playing the game just had it loaded... i think i need to undervolt this thing for sure...

just did a 3d test, temps went to 102c while doing graphics test even stayed at 90 during CPU, heres my 3d test results i need to fix this ASAP this isnt good at all.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/98/68185447.png/

 

reflash the video card to 9800m gs and see how the temps are.

 

i havent flashed it, was going to flash it to the gts and undervolt it just waiting on a pm back for detailed instructions and files to do so.

 

I have a lot of stuff going on at the moment, it might be faster if you tried to compile things yourself, sorry

 

i was able to run the flash and it seems fine, re ran 3d program thingy and 1st gpu test it got to 96-97c max, 2nd test it got to 101c.... so idk what should i do? i cant game with 101-103c temps.