Envy 14 gets extremely hot, can't figure it out. Help?

So, I've had my E14 for a while now (I bought it the month it came out), and I've been having an issue recently that is quite disturbing.

Basically, any time I am doing any heavy lifting (mainly playing any 3d games, like Portal 2) my E14 will get so hot that it shuts down to protect itself. CPUID shows it reaching max temperatures of ~105c, so it's a big problem. I used to play WoW all the time(until a few months ago) and never had issues like this.

I tried updating my GPU drivers, but when I try, the installer gives me an error messages saying that I'm "not using supported hardware". These drivers are straight from AMD's website.

I'm at a loss. If there any advice or tips you could give me, I would be eternally grateful.

EDIT: I decided to try to play a game of HL2: DM a minute ago. This is what happened after about 15 and I restarted my E14 after it shut down.

 

Alternative question: Does anyone have a favorite laptop cooler?

 

You might want to access your advanced BIOS settings ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/563970-access-hp-envy-14-f-23-bios-advanced-options.html) and lower your high fan speed thresholds.
Another thing you might want to do is deactivate hyperthreading as it has no real performance gains for gaming and creates a lot of unnecessary heat ... unless you're doing something optimized for 8 threads i.e. video rendering. I want to warn you in advance, when I tried, I was no longer able to boot my computer out of standby without removing the battery. YMMV since I have an i7 and you have an i5.

What i've done in the past is open up my laptop to remove all the gunk that's been accumulating between the fins of my heatsink, you can also try using a vacuum cleaner (with caution)

 

Dust perhaps?

Even an i7 shouldn't hit anything above the 80s when gaming for long periods of time.

If it's not dust and it's on a hard surface, I'd lean towards a faulty fan

 

I took the bottom off last wee and both fans seemed to be working, and I can feel the exhaust blowing from both the side and back, so the fans are working.

The fans run at full speed the entire time a game is running.

 

hmmm... you might want to go to a tech shop and get them to reapply the thermal paste (i've been planning to do that for a while now).
I hope it helps, please post back with your experiences.

 

yeah. That sounds like thermal paste issues.

Mine still idles at like 43 or so.

 

100C is pretty high, your heatsinks may not be properly seated.

While gaming, Try to set your maximum CPU to like 70 or 80%, your temps should go down a bit.

Disabling turboboost will help too.

 

You paid a lot of money for this laptop. Assuming out is still under warranty I'd send it in and get it fixed or a new one for free. you shouldn't have to deal with that.

 

I saw the suggestion made that you might have dust in your heat sinks, but you don't seem to have responded to it. I had some overheating issues for a while, which have been alleviated somewhat by opening up the bottom of the Envy (the whole bottom panel) and cleaning out the fans a bit, basically blowing air in the heat sinks (compressed air would be better) while holding the computer upright so that the excess dust (which will look like pads of felt) can come out, and then I used some tweezers to pick out the dust bunnies that didn't fall and wiped the fan blades a bit with some q-tips. A more thorough cleaning could be achieved by taking the whole thing apart so you could clean the fans properly, but that's much more work than just opening up the base.

Now, as before my overheating problem started, I'm able to play games long enough (i.e. 15-30 minutes) that the GPU crashes, rather than the mobo shutting off from overheating. Woohoo...

 

joyous bad gcrussel gpu.

hey russell, do you know what voltage your gpu is getting when it's in use (through using gpu-z or whatever and monitoring it for a minute or two)

'cause maybe it's just not getting enough juice. I know mine requires 0.95 volts (idles at 0.9).

someone else's (EAFD) idles at 0.95 and clocks up to 1.0 volts (he has a envy CTO 1100)


Sapphire Technology - TriXX Tweak Utility works with my computer (not that I really ever bother overclocking) but it can also control voltage.

you could try holding the voltage at 0.95 or something to see what happens. Version 4.0 works anyway (not sure about the older ones)

 

I don't recall what utility it was, but I recently kind've incidentally saw the voltage listed somewhere while I was running. I don't remember if I was alt-tabbed out of a game or just doing normal stuff, but it was 1.0 volts. The problem has been progressive - when I bought it, I put in WAY too many hours of Borderlands and it ran fine. Now it crashes after 20 minutes of Half Life 2, and Borderlands was even worse when I last tried it a few months ago, just a couple minutes before it crashed.

 

huh, maybe try bumping the voltage down to 0.95 (if the program will let you?)

otherwise yeah...it's just deteriorating.

 

Playing flash games brings my cpu temps up to 89deg Celsius. Is that normal? Ps. playing Mw2 for 3hrs only brings it up to 80deg C..

 

Hi, this forum pretty much convinced me to get my Envy 14 and I've learned a lot occasionally lurking and whatnot. Over the past few months, I've also noticed my laptop getting really really hot. Yesterday, when playing a bit of SC2, the laptop also repeatedly shut down on itself after maybe 15-30 minutes from what I assume is overheating, prompting me to finally search for answers online, bringing me here. Like other posters, this didn't happen when I first played SC2. I got my laptop and SC2 around the same time, so put a lot of time into SC2 right off the bat and didn't experience these issues before. I resorted to turning down the graphic settings but it'd still overheat and shut down itself.

It was mentioned that we should first check the fans, heat sinks, and internals for dust buildup. Does anyone have any instructions or links to instructions on how to go about removing the back panel to do just that?

Beyond that, has anyone else figured out what may be going on or what solutions are available?

Thanks in advance.

 

About the backpanel - it's easy, really. Just unscrewing a few screws and removing a touchpad connector. There surely is a tutorial somewhere in this forum (I've been using it before). You just need to look for it a little.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I've been searching the forum looking for something like that but haven't found it. Kinda why I explicitly asked, hoping someone who has it bookmarked or something will throw me a direct link to it if it exists.

Edit: Heh, I found an HP disassembly guide but without pictures...and I don't think its just for removing the back panel as much as it is about tearing the whole thing apart. Yikes.

 

The back panel-

Take off the battery/HDD cover.

The back panel comes in 2 parts- battery cover and motherboard cover.

The motherboard cover has 5 smallish screws that are concealed by the lip of the battery cover, you'll see them in a line. Take those off and you can slide the back cover off just like the battery cover.

 

I can imagine a few possibilities:

1. The Intel Core i7 processor is activating Turbo Boost to keep up with the game's demands, but as the CPU temperature rises, it doesn't turn off Turbo Boost soon enough to let the processor cool back down, and the CPU gets so hot that the emergency shutdown occurs. The turn on / turn off decisions made for Turbo Boost may not be calibrated right for heavy gaming.

2. Same as #1, except that it's the graphics processor inside the chip package that is getting really hot. That heats up the CPU faster than the Turbo Boost on / off decision maker expects.

3. You're running the laptop on something soft (like a bed, or a blanket on your lap) and that's blocking some of the air vents.

See Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 , in particular the Javascript demon on that page. In creating an Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 that "stays on longer", Intel may have pushed the envelope a little too far.

Also, the Envy 14 designers at HP may have decided that heavy gaming was an exceptional use of the product, requiring the user to buy and use an external laptop cooler.

One would hope that some tweaking of the BIOS parameters for the CPU and graphics chips, to turn off Turbo Boost sooner, could fix this problem.

 

This is the first-gen Envy, so the non-SB CPUs use turbo boost 1.0, which limits the processor to its designed TDP.

Most likely he's running the laptop on a soft surface or the laptop has dust. I'm assuming high temps didn't occur before.

Also @OP, what are your ambient temps? If your ambient got significantly hotter because it's summer then I suppose it's normal. Any which way, your CPU should be 60C or less at an 80-85F ambient.

 

Hello guys! I'm back because I was never able to resolve this issue, but I stopped doing any gaming so it stopped being an issue.

I've recently started running into this problem again and I believe I've narrowed it down to the thermal paste issue. I don't have the funds at the moment to take it to get repaired, so I'm going to reseat the heatsink myself. but do to the complexity of the heatsinks and fan system, I don't want to just start unscrewing things. I called the "special ENVY concierge service" to see if, by some stroke of luck, they had a disassambly guide, but there only answer was "send it to us, along with 400 bucks, and we'll do it!".

So, I come back to you fine folks to help me out. Does anyone know of a good disassembly guide?

 

So, I kept looking after I last posted and was able to find this.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02835360/c02835360.pdf [WARNING: PDF]

Getting the Heatsink off required a lot more work than I had expected, but I was able to do it. It's only been a day since, but it's already running cooler. The thermal paste I used (Arctic Silver Matrix) takes up to 300 hours to fully set, so I expect things to only get better. Thanks for the help guys!

 

Sweet. Do you have any numbers or more words on how much it helped? Ive been debating reapplying mine.

Thanks