New HP DV6628 - odd CPU temp readings (99 degrees C!)

Whew.. Haven't been onto the forums since I had trouble with my old DV5000! Anyway, I just purchased a new HP DV6628 [T2310/2GB RAM/120GB HDD/X3100] and LOVE it! Screen is nice, it's fast, keyboard is great, and the "Imprint" finish is neat. Battery life seems fairly good as well, I think I'm averaging 3 to 3.5 hours.

I updated to the latest BIOS and like before the update, the fan runs kind of often. The air coming out of it is barely warm. I'm idling right now at 49-50 degrees C. I was encoding some files from .FLV to .MPEG with Riva FLV encoder when NHC starting screeching at me telling me to save my work and shut down because the core temp of my CPU had reached 99 degrees C! I closed everything and the temp settled back down to normal. I've been trying to recreate the extremely high temps by doing Photoshop stress tests, along with using Orthos with my power plan set at high performance without success. After 8 minutes with Orthos, temps maxed out at 66 degrees C with the fan running constantly with slightly warm air coming out. Perhaps that crappy program I was using to encode is the culprit?

I have been here on the forums searching and reading all night and see high temps aren't all that uncommon with some of the HP lines. Even when NHC was reporting my CPU @ 99 degrees C, the air coming out of the vents wasn't hot [the fan was running full blast] and the bottom of the laptop felt okay.

Should I be concerned? My daily-use laptop is a Sony S460, and saying it is an oven would be an understatement. That thing can get HOT! Physically, this DV6628 still feels cooler than my Sony, save for where the HDD is. Overall though - I'm really loving this HP. I even ordered a new 12 cell battery for it! . They've come a long way since the defective (yep, keyboard problems) DV5000 I had for a week.

 

That does sound odd indeed...have a look at the notebook cooling guide

 

See if HWMonitor agrees with NHC. If 99C is accurate, given your symptoms I suspect that the heatsink wasn't mounted properly. That would cause the barely warm exhaust despite the high CPU temp.

 

^ Thanks for the link. I'll have to check it out..

And I'll download that program this afternoon and see if it's the same as NHC. SpeedFan was reporting 28-29 degrees C at idle which I know isn't right. If the heatsink wasn't mounted properly, would the bottom of the laptop be hotter than usual? Any other symptoms? I'd really like to keep this laptop if possible so we'll see how it behaves for the remainder of my 14 day return period.

PS: I'm located in Hawaii, so ambient temperature even at night can be up to 80 degrees. Once it dropped to about 65-70 degrees at night, the exhaust felt warm at idle.

 

NHC reports the same. It was running a few degrees C cooler, but I opened up a bunch of apps (FF, PowerPoint, Word, and Photoshop) and this is the resulting idle temp. Not too shabby I'd say.

 

Those temps your getting on that screenshot are normal. NHC is probably screwed up. Use RMclock if your gonna undervolt in Vista

Your HDD is quite cool actually.

 

NHC freaked out while I was encoding video.. I don't see how that would tax the system so much that it would be at double the idle temp. Like you said, either NHC was messed up or the encoding program I was using made Vista/my computer crazy.

I attempted to undervolt but like someone else mentioned in another thread, all 6 multipliers say 1.250v so I can't really do anything until RMclock gets updated. Undervolting my Sony (which I use daily) helped immensely with heat and a little bit as far as battery life. I'm going to undervolt my new HP once RMclock or another program will recognize the multipliers correctly.

 

You must have missed something. You forgot to untick " Automatically Adjust Intermediate State VID" box. If you follow the directions right, there shouldnt be any problems

 

I followed blackhawk's (I think that was the poster) guide to the letter. As I mentioned, someone else has the same problem as far as voltages being linear instead of varying. Makes it kind of hard to undervolt when you don't know the defaults.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway though. I'm hoping with a future release of RMclock or NHC I'll be able to undervolt my new HP.

 

No i had that same problem too when i first installed RMclock and i though it was messed up but i changed a setting and it revealed all the default voltages

 

Okay, I'll give it a try again this week. Undervolting my Sony was pretty quick, so I'm hoping I can get my HP undervolted somehow. In the meantime, I did purchase a 12 cell battery and battery life is at a whopping 7-8 hours. I love it!

 

I was messing around on my HP last night and set it to the "High Performance" power profile while I surfed the web and watched a few vids on YouTube. In a matter of 30-60 seconds the fan was whirring at high speed and temps were in the 70's to 80's. Stressing a bit by opening Photoshop and a couple of other programs pushed it to 94 degrees C. The bottom of the laptop felt fine and the air coming out was cool/warm. Someone mentioned perhaps reseating the heat sink.. I'm debating whether or not I want to/can tackle that

Other than that, keeping it on "Balanced" it stays at 47-55 degrees C pretty consistently even if it's on a soft surface like my bed. Nothing seems wrong until I stress it. I'll try the same on my Sony which turns into a furnance; I know it gets hot but I've never stressed it and measured its temp.

Below is a picture of temps while running Photoshop, surfing YouTube, and checking email via Thunderbird. Nothing overly complicated IMO..

 

Your gonna need to undervolt that thing to drop down the max temps to 70ish. Give RMclock another go. Make sure you download version 2.30.1 , the latest RMclock has too many advanced settings that its confusing.

If you had the same CPU as me i could give a safe set of voltages for rmclock

 

My view is that you have an inherent hardware issue. Surfing the net and watch a few simple video should not stress your machine to the point of reaching 90+ C. I think it is time you send back your machine to HP for warranty service.

 

If your out of warranty then you might aswell change the thermal paste using arctic silver 5 and reseat the heatsink properly.

 

Argh.. It's only three weeks old. One week past the 14 day return period. All things considered, I like this machine a lot. I agree that something must be wrong for temps to get so high, but if cooling was inefficient, wouldn't it also affect the machine at all speeds, speed stepping or not?

Reading through the HP warranty stories here, I'm hesitant to send my brand new HP in for service. Seems like a lot of people have gotten their machines back scratched or damaged in some other way? I'm going to poke around RMclock and see what it can do.

BTW, flipfire -- I've got a T2310. If you've got the same CPU, what kind of voltages are you using?

 

I have a T7500 which will run on higher voltages than a T2310 so you cant use mine. Theres a thread in the hardware section where people post their undervolting results. This will be a good place to copy some voltages for your processor