nc8430 overheating or faulty thermostat?

For the past week, the fan in my nc8430 has been continually running at full blast, no matter how little system activity is going on.

I've tried:

• Cleaning out any dust (there was almost none)
• Adjusting the power ATi power settings to optimize battery life
• Updating the BIOS to the latest version
• Disabling "fan always on" in the BIOS

Speedfan has been indcating 80C or 90C, but the areas above and below the CPU/GPU (left speaker and bottom casing) were barely warm.

Then today, it began automatically shutting itself off only a few minutes after powering on. This after leaving it off all night, which I do normally. I can power it back on, but it always shuts itself off after a few minutes.

I removed the keyboard to feel how hot the heatsinks were getting and ... well, it's easier to explain with a diagram:



I'm going to pick up some thermal paste on Monday and see if that helps.

Any other suggestions? I should really know this, but is that how hot a heatsink should normally feel or could the thermostat be faulty?

 

Heatpipes in the heatsink assy could be dead and do not transfer heat properly anymore. Heatpipe should be hot all the way to the heatsink. If it isn't, replacing the heatsink itself would be an option to look for.

When I had same laptop, I remember heat was an issue and I did undervolt and underclock everything I could and then replaced the laptop with my current 8510w anyways.

 

Ah, makes sense. I think I'll replace the entire passive cooling assembly and apply fresh thermal paste while I'm at it.

Yeah, heat has always been an issue with this laptop. Whenever I run it on my desk, I place it on an elevated stand and have a couple of desktop case fans rugged to run on either side to create more airflow.

 

Had nc8430 for 6 years. This sounds like heatpipe leading from gpu to fan "died". Happened to me after i had it for around 3 years. Best way to test is while your keyboard is off, both ends of heatpipe should be equally hot in 2-3 seconds after you turn your notebook on. Before changing my old one took around 5-6 to "heat up" fan side of the heatpipe.

 

Interesting, didn't realize that was a part that wore out. Thanks.

Makes sense. I usually ran it elevated on a desk and created additional airflow, so it lasted a couple more years.

Yup, I did just that. The heat pipe above the GPU gets burning hot in under a minute. The one above the CPU is pretty warm, but not quite as hot.

 

Cpu and gpu are two different heatpipes.


Try heating up the red spot (where gpu is) (you can use lighter or a candle, but dont put flame directly on heatpipe, keep some distance), two black spots should heat up at pretty much same time. or 2-4 seconds after you start heating up "red" end.

My defective heatpipe took somwhere around 12-3ish seconds to heat up equally around same time it took for a random piece of copper i had laying around my flat.

Also if you wanna make for sure gpu cooling is defective b4 you spend money on new fan assembly you can try something like this:

Just take down fan assembly add some thermal grese to gpu, attach any heatsink you have at home. ( i placed zalman northbridge cooler i had laying around from one of my old rigs) If you can add any fan in the mix that would be awsome. I was using this for few weeks till my replacement cooling arived:

If after this "mod" you still have thermal issues then its not fan assembly thats faulty, something else is...

 

Wow, cool hack. Thanks, I might just try that!

 

Wow, I never knew copper heat sinks could simply "die" like that. I'll have to keep my eye on that. I have an nw8440, which is the ISV-certified workstation twin of the nc8430, and I've never had any heating trouble per se in the 6 1/2 years I've owned it. Although the laptop has indeed always run on the warm side, I found if I took the keyboard off and blew air into the fan/vents regularly (once every 2 months or so), I'd never have any thermal issues to speak of. If I forgot to do it.... let's just say the CPU did hit 100C once according to HWMonitor, but my laptop miraculously stayed on until the CPU activity died down, lol. Some of my classmates' nw8440s back in college, though, had fans that ran much harder than mine, which I always assumed was from dirty vents (We all had to buy the same laptop when we entered college in 2006. They used the same model, albiet with better specs, in 2007 as well)

That's freaking AWESOME!!

 

How is problem solving going?

I just remembered that this summer (7.2012.) i had similar problem. Gpu was hitting high high 80's (iirc Aida 64 shows gpu temp as CPU under sensors tab, found that out during my "cooling hack" while running msi kombustor that was the only temp that was rising) Radiator was dust-free, new thermal grease and thermal pads were applied, heat-pipe was working fine, fan was blasting like crazy but temps were raising. Only thing that helped in the end was windows reinstal. I guess something in registry or windows itself got mixed/stopped working. Because driver reinstal nor system restore did any good. And gpu even without load was burning hot!

 

Mine will shut itself off just sitting in the BIOS, so it's definitely not a driver issue.

 

Mine was doing the same thing, but only after I updated the BIOS. I discovered that HP didn't support the nc8430 with windows 7. My current issue, is that under normal opperations, the laptop runs fine. Yet, under stressed and high frame rate games, it overheats quickly. Here are the screenshots I took under normal, and stressed conditions.





If it will let you, do what I did. I rolled back the BIOS version to the factory version. I've been told by HP that I couldn't do it, but I did just fine. You will need to get a flash drive and download the correct BIOS from HP. Mine is 68YVD.ver.F.oc Give that a shot and hope it helps

And, these heat tests I took, while using a laptop cooler elevated @ 10 degrees..

 

And of course, I had to resort to drastic measures to keep the nc8430 cool enough to reinstall the BIOS.

 

Goliath i'm 100% sure that although aida says its CPU hitting 100C that diode is actually somewhere on/near GPU, so basically your GPU is overheating. So try removing heatpipe and test it the way i wrote on page 1, even try to do that "aftermarket cooling" i made. It's really only 2 screws for keyboard and extra 6 to remove fan and gpu heatpipe and assembly. Total of 8 screws nad heatpipe is around 20-30$ on ebay.

Once you replace faulty heatpipe you can move back to latest bios.

I've sold my nc8430 just two weeks ago. It was running windows 7x64 for last two years without any issues. Heck i even played league of legends and world of warcraft regularly on it, sometimes for hours.

EDIT: Also golitah you can lower temps by alot if you undervolt your cpu using rmclock utility 2.35, you can download it for free here. If you'r using 64 bit windows pm me so i can send you little .dll fix for rmclock to work under 64 bit windows.

Here are few listings from ebay for what you need.

If you need any additional info ask here or pm me.

Here you can find Service and Maintenance manual. Guide how to disassemble cooling and stuff.

 

Thanks darkydark, I'll give it a try.

Here are the specs for mine.

 

This is odd, I altered my graphics settings a bit, and the bare minn lvls, and this is what I get.

 

You went with performance on demand and fiddeled with powerplay?

Edit: did you clean heatsink? Dust can sometimes clog the radiator...

 

I did not clean heatsink yet. I was going to try compressed air first. I might as well start with the cheapest first. After over riding the program's visual features, by swapping more towards performance instead of quality, the results are as I posted before. Very low temps even after a heavy load. It wouldn't get hotter than 71c. I'm still going to do the steps you suggested, and all it can do is help.

 

If you spray compressed air from outside, you wont fix anything. I mean you will for few days but then dust will clog the radiator again. What will happen is: you will push dust into fan and after few days fan will clog the heatsink again.

 

But if you do use compressed air, remember to block fan from spinning first. Otherwise you might be on the market for new fan as the old one's bearings got busted for spinning too fast and backwards.

 

I'm not just going to clean from the outside, I'm going to pull the keyboard off and clean every surface I can. I will immobilize the fan, thanks for the tip.