Replaced 35W i5-2410M dual core with 45W i7-2760QM - All's Well. BOINC Temps?

I have a 2011-vintage Toshiba Satellite L755-S5258 laptop that came with a 35W Sandy Bridge i5-2410M dual core (w/hyperthreading), 2.3 Ghz base - Turbo to 2.9 Ghz, got years of great use out of it. Never abused, always kept clean & dust-free. Just for kicks, I went on eBay and bought a 45W Sandy Bridge i7-2760QM quad core CPU w/HTT, 2.4 Ghz - 3.5 GHz (Turbo), $75 USD, I swapped it in, and it runs perfectly. BIOS ID'ed it, all features enabled. I cleaned the i7 (with 91% isopropyl) & applied ArcticSilver 5, and cleaned & tinned the copper heat sink. I benchmarked it with Passmark 9.0, scores consistently around 7,050 on the CPU portion. On Geekbench 4.2 x64 it scored 3,634 (single core) and 10,327 (all cores), ( https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/4922734 ). Cinebench R15 CPU score is 545. Temps never went higher than 82°C according to CPUID HWMonitor. I have a new CoolerMaster 130W AC charger for it, too. Fan and duct are 100% clear of dust, and I have the laptop raised up about 1" inch on 4 little plastic caps, on top of my desk.

I am using this laptop for BOINC World Community Grid (cancer gene markers), running 24/7/365, but I've down-clocked the i7 to 2.2 GHz base speed, where it's locked in (disabled TurboBoost, & using custom Windows 10 Power Plan).

It's averaging around 55°C - 57°C, 75% of the time in BOINC, spiking to around 62° - 63°C, about 25% of the time (3 out of every 4 seconds, it's in the mid-50s, for the remaining 1 second it hits 63°C). Are these temps likely going to cause cracking or crystalization of the system board solder joints, or otherwise shorten the life of this 6 year old laptop?

 

Should be fine - my sister uses a T410 and that runs at 70-80*C for the most part under load - 6 years late, still kicking.

 

Good to know, don - thanks for the prompt reply. so your sister is using her notebook for round the clock crunching, like i am, mine? (btw, i took out my L755's fairly new Anker 5200mAh battery and run the laptop on an APC UPS).

Also, i took out the 1TB 5,400 rpm WD spinner HDD and put in a PNY CS1311 240 GB SATA3 SSD (on a 6Gbps SATA3 port), along with 16GB of Crucial DDR3-1600 CL9 Ballstix RAM (2x8GB), @ 1600 MHz. The SSD should help keep things a bit cooler, too, I'd think. Except for the lack of a discrete GPU (uses the intel HD3000 IGP), this thing's a #-crunching beast!

 

She doesn't do any heavy work per say but she IS a power user and considering Nahalem runs notoriously hot - you have the end result above

 

Those temps seem fine to me. Also be aware that Arctic Silver 5 has a burn-in time.

Copied from ArcticSilver's site:

"Important Reminder:
Due to the unique shape and sizes of the particles in Arctic Silver 5's conductive matrix, it will take a up to 200 hours and several thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction and for the heatsink to CPU interface to reach maximum conductivity. (This period will be longer in a system without a fan on the heatsink or with a low speed fan on the heatsink.) On systems measuring actual internal core temperatures via the CPU's internal diode, the measured temperature will often drop 2C to 5C over this "break-in" period. This break-in will occur during the normal use of the computer as long as the computer is turned off from time to time and the interface is allowed to cool to room temperature. Once the break-in is complete, the computer can be left on if desired."

 

as5 should be illegal now with better pastes on the market

 

"illegal"? What...put Arctic Silver 5 into the Schedule III Controlled Substance category? Surely you jest, Mobius!

 

Thanks, kosti. Much appreciated!

I should mention that I haven't powered off my notebook yet, since I installed the i7 in it with the new AS5 paste, so the thermal interface hasn't reached "room temperature" again, since that time. I've run the notebook non-stop without incident for the past 10 days (240 hours, > 200 hour break-in time), 24/7, but now I'm a bit concerned that the AS5 paste won't "break in" now?

 

Well they claim that the temps should drop from 2 to 5 degrees Celcius after the break-in period so as long as you're monitoring your temps you should be fine. So far your temps look good. If they start creeping into the high 80s or 90s is when I'd start to worry. In any event your CPU will eventually initiate a system shutdown to protect itself once the temps get really crazy. That usually happens around 100C or 105C. Usually the issues with solder joints failing applies to soldered-on processors (aka BGA), but yours is not soldered on so there's less to worry about there. That's not to say that excess heat can't affect other components on the motherboard though. That's why it's just best to monitor temps from time to time.

 

Temps should be fine and no issues. I would get rid of the AS5 for sure and use something like IC Diamond or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Guarantee your temps will drop more and needs little to no set in time. AS5 dries out quickly too. IC Diamond I've had in laptops for years and barely affects temps.

 

Thanks for your input, HTWingNut -

I've heard accounts out in the wild that IC Diamond really does gouge & scratch the top surfaces of CPU silicon dies, as well as aluminum and copper heat sink surfaces (which might then require re-lapping?) - what say you?

So, occasional CPU temp spikes to 63°C (for 25% duty cycle) should be a'ight? Cool.


(btw, i like your "Leeloo" av, from "The Fifth Element" - in my top 5 fave Sci-Fi flicks)

 

@Trevayne10 I second Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Best non-conductive thermal paste IMO. If your 2760QM stays below 90C under heavy stress (Prime95 or similar), all is OK.

 

Thanks, Starlight. I'll have to give Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut a try on my 15" HP notebook with the very thermally-problematic i7-6700HQ CPU...core 0 usually runs 8 - 10°C hotter than the other 3, which causes no end of down-throttling problems for the whole package, with all 4 cores. Core 0 "spoils the party", so to speak, every time.

Fortunately the heat spreader / heat sink for my 6700HQ has 4 actual legs & screws - one in each corner - rather than just 3 (inexcusable, this design decision), so re-pasting might make sense here.

I'll pick up some Kryonaut and let you know - thanks for the tip.

(btw, for i7 mobile CPUs beginning with Sandy Bridge, I use the 2mm wide "vertical line" approach to pasting, right down the middle of the longer side, and right to the edges of the die. I'm done with trying to "spread" the crap to a "nice, even surface"...it's impossible, so the hell with it)

 

Out of curiosity, in addition to using a better thermal grease vs AS5... have you considered undervolting the CPU?
You could reduce it's power draw at turbo clock speeds and drop the temperatures by about 5 to 10 degrees C (if the CPU can be undervolted).

 

Hi Deks - thanks for the suggestion about undervolting. Unfortunately none of the BIOSes in my notebook computers has any options for playing around with CPU voltages, so I'm kinda stuck, in that regard.

Thanks!

- Trev

 

Get Kryonaut + Undervolt the CPU and you'll be fine

 

Actually, I was thinking on using something akin to ThrottleStop program to undervolt the CPU.
Most BIOS-es are locked on laptops to begin with, so they wouldn't allow such modifications.

 

Thanks, Deks -

Nope, can't undervolt Sandy Bridge CPUs (particularly mobile), even with ThrottleStop - > 90% of this intel generation is locked down. Hard. And my i7-2760QM is one of them. And since I'm running BOINC 24/7 on it, I can live with downclocking it from 2.4GHz to 2.2GHz on all 4 cores (and with HTT enabled), and Turbo disabled. Overall, this CPU attains benchmark scores within 86% - 90% of the i7-4700HQ CPU in my Asus notebook - despite being an intel 'Tick' and a 'Tock' behind. I also down-clock the 4700HQ to 2.2 GHz, since it's also running BOINC World Community Grid (Cancer projects), 24/7/365. Both laptop CPUs stay around 50 - 57°C, 75% of duty cycle, and spike to no higher than 64°C, for 25% of duty cycle.

The consensus here in Notebookreview seems to be that these are perfectly safe temp ranges for these CPUs, running 24/7/365. Both of these laptops have their batteries removed, and they're on an APC BN600G UPS (which I monitor and manage using PowerChute over USB data connection, and remotely with TeamViewer).

Thanks again!

-Trev