Overheating: Underclocking stinks?

I recently (in february) bought a new Compaq Presario V4000t from the hp onlinestore.

It came stock with 256 mb ram, and an Intel Pentium M 1.74 Ghz Processor.

My sister had previously bought a compaq presario v2000 with 512 mb ram and a celeron processor.

Her laptop always seemed to overheat, so I helped her underclock it and now it works fine, with a lesser CPU speed.

Now, my laptop on the other hand, never seemed to overheat, as hers always did after only a bit of use (Celeron processors of course do overheat more often anyway).

But, 256 mb ram is nothing to tote around when playing games such as The Elder Scrolls: IV Oblivion. So, I went out and bought 30$ worth of 512 mb ram. Yah, it was like 70 dollars mail in rebate, which i still havent gotten back. Anyway, since i installed that, my laptop overheats within a half hour of it running its max CPU.

Is there a way to get my computer to stop overheating without having the cut my CPU in HALF?? There is a huge speed difference when I am processing digital imagery, playing games, or just messing around.

Underclocking stinks? yes.

 

Well I would reccomend a few things. Simplest solution is to buy a cooling pad. I never game on my laptop without one. You will see about 5-10C drops in temps on everything....GPU, CPU, RAM and HD. The alternative route which I don't really reccommend unless you don't have a warranty and don't mind opening up you lappy is to apply Arctic Silver 5 to all of the CPU and GPU. Also, don't run at max CPU speed. Download a program such as SpeedSwitchXP and set it to dynamics switching. That way, it will only clock high when it needs to, instead of all of the time. Hope that helps a bit.

 

You can use undervolt instead of underclock. Undervolting involve lot of stablized testing process. People usually run Prim95 for hours to get stable VID. P-M is good on undervolting, but nobody get celeron figure yet. Lot of user play this on AMD CPU.

 

I shall quest tomorrow for a cooling pad! Any suggestions (major retailers) or brand types?

 

Undervolting helps a lot when running the CPU at max! Celerons cannot be undervolted because they do not have speed steps. I suggest you undervolt first and see what the result is. Further, if you have the x700 in your laptop, I believe this is the problem.
Anyways, get a cooler for gaming, it's always good to keep your laptop as cool as possible. Another trick is to raise the bottom of the laptop 2-3cm (1 1/2 inch) and thus improve the airflow under the notebook.

 

Try downloading Notebook Hardware Control and undervolting your Pentium M. It'll bring down temperatures by several degrees and give you longer battery life.

For coolers, I recomend the Spire Pacific Breeze.

 

Just checking, but how do you know the problem is overheating, and not.... something else?

 

I have gamed on my laptop without a pad and it does get warm. If you are going to game it is essential to use a cooling pad, or at least prop the back of the laptop up for better ventilation. I have a slight mod to mine (which is reversable) and with that and a cooling pad I have significantly reduced temps.

Laptops were designed to work with factory settings and without a cooling pad, even at full tilt. So I would investigate what is wrong, instead of JUST masking the issue. Do go out and get a cooler pad and all, but investigate the issue (e.g. excessive dust, blocked misdirected vents/exhaust, etc...). Go that route first.

 

I agree with Jalf. There has to be another problem. You have cats or something, animals that might get lots of hair caught in the air ducts? Dust in the machines? Your sister's laptop shouldn't overheat in it's standard configuration. Your's is nearly standard (more RAM shouldn't change it TOO much), so you shouldn't run into those problems either. Most laptops are designed to run at their specc'd speeds with proper cooling.
You need to look at what the actual cause of the problem is. I doubt it's just your machine running too fast.

 

Well, since you haven't said what the symptoms are, it might not even be overheating at all. Why couldn't the new ram simply be defective?

 

Well what happened was it never overheated until i bought an extra 512 ram. I notice a huge difference in the actual temperature, so it's not like i just assumed it's overheating. It is getting much, much hotter since the ram upgrade.

Once i underclocked my cpu so it runs at around 1 ghz (usually less) it stopped shutting down on it's own.

Also, i do have the X700 video card.

I will look into this undervoltage thing. I do believe RM Clock has this function...