My HP gets way too hot!

Hello everyone!

I am not the most active on the forums, and i apologize, but i do not know who else to turn to...

I have an HP dv7-2185dx that I bought at best buy about a year ago. It is flagged as an entertainment/gaming pc, but when I do anything on it, it gets warm. Very warm. Even as I am writing this message, I am getting temps of 141F off the processor and 148F off the GPU. While playing games, the computer gets as high as 206F and has even shut off on me in the past.

I don't play games for hours and hours on end, but even today, after about an hour of playing fallout 3, i had a temp of 206F. The fan gets noticeably loud at this temperature too. I have taken it in to get the vents and fan cleaned, and I can feel air moving, but no change in temperature.

Is there anything I can do? I bought a cooling pad, and it barely works at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have seen videos where people modify the vents on the bottom of their laptops, so I am open to any modifications that would work as well. I posted a photo of the two vents that exhaust hot air out of the laptop, and then the entire bottom section of the laptop.

Here are the specs for the laptop:

HP dv7-2185dx
Intel Quad Core Q9000 2.0GHz
6GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
-1 GB Dedicated RAM

If you need any other specs, I can look them up, but these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

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Thanks for all the help!

 

Oh I forgot to mention it has a single 500 GB hard drive.

 

I really hope you just took the pictures on a blanket, because if you do most of your computing on a less then flat surface it might explain it. Laptops need to breath and if you lessen that air flow it will heat up, and heat up quick if you start playing games. As for your cooling pad, is it one of those mats or a full on stand?

 

Oh yeah, I just took the photo on a blanket, I keep it on the desk most of the time. I bought a stand for it, not a mat as well...

 

The best solution would probably be to crack it open, clean off the thermal goo, and reapply quality thermal paste to both the CPU and GPU.

 

...and remove all dust from the heat sinks, so the air can flow again.

 

My notebook is pretty similar to yours, and I see similar temps - I think it is pretty much normal

I leave mine on for weeks at a time, and on a fresh boot, it is at about 48C then stabilizes around 60C - If I game at all it goes to around 80C (Fallout 3, GTA IV, CODMW2) so your gaming temps seem slightly high and I've never had it shutdown on me.

If you're still under warranty (I'm assuming since yours seems newer than mine and I still have the original warranty) your best bet might be to send it in and tell them that it is reaching 100C and shutting down, and when you speak to them, tell them that it happens even on an install from the recovery discs so they don't make you do stuff like that. They'll probably open it up, clean it out, and replace parts if they need to (my old laptop had its mobo replaced 3 times).

 

I think I will do that velocity, on a fresh boot, with it off overnight, i have about 38C. I think I will call them today, and have them do whatever they need to do...In the meantime, are there any really good laptop cooling pads anyone would reccomend?

 

Zalman nc2000

 

Thanks guys for the help...I ended up undervolting my laptop (1.2875 V to 1.2625 V) and have noticed a fairly large decrease in the temperature, especially during gaming. (91C dropped to 82C) Thats not bad for a free modification ;P. I am going to wait for the Zalman NC-3000U to come out as well, and buy that.

 

Oh, I neglected to mention I ran a 24 hr stress test using prime95, so it seems to be stable as well, for anyone else looking to undervolt a Quad Core Q9000

 

That is a very good improvement. Still clean the fans.