SEVERE temps with dv6000 and GeForce 6150

Ok, I was given a dv6113us 2 weeks ago for free since it didn't work. It had the typical no video boot problem. I paid someone on ebay to fix the laptop for me for 80 bucks . Hp said I was out of warranty so they couldn't help me. The guy on eBay told me that he would basically reball and resolder my geforce 6150 chip on there. I sent it in last week, and I just got it back in the mail yesterday and all is working great except for some random freezing at times. The laptop will freeze for a minute every couple of minutes. The hard drive just stops reading out of nowhere, then starts again. Its a brand new hard drive. I was thinking this had to do with heat somewhere in the system.

I downloaded Core Temp and found that the CPU was running pretty cool on both cores. Around 40c with medium load. Then I downloaded GPU-Z and saw these insane temps! I couldn't believe my eyes! My GPU temps hover around from 97 degrees celsius to 109 degrees celsius.



Before I sent in the laptop I tried taking it apart and was stuck at the top cover. Something was holding it together by the track pad. I almost ripped the cover off but decided to give up and put it back together. Now that I found the post from MrFoo, NOW I know what was holding me back! Thanks!

But now that I know how to take this thing apart, I'm thinking on applying Arctic Silver 5 on the GPU and everything else. I have a feeling that the guy either didn't apply any thermal goop on my GPU because he forgot, or he didn't put it on right. I seriously don't want this GPU's solder joints to melt or break again. Do you guys think it would help alot if I use Arctic Silver 5? I cant think of any other reason for my GPU being incredibly hot but my CPU be cool, even though they are sharing the same heatsink. What do you guys think? Thanks guys!

Edit: Every other program I have tried out there shows the same temps for the GPU

 

Ok I went ahead and took it apart. Thanks to MrFoo I was able to go all the way through. I finally got to see the GPU for the first time. I had no idea it was so tiny. I noticed that the GPU has no thermal goop on it. Instead it has a little thermal pad. No wonder this thing is overheating.

I see why the they used a thermal pad. It's due to there being a large gap between the heatsink and the GPU. I know that you normally aren't supposed to use Arctic Silver 5 for large gaps such as this, but I figured I would try it anyways since there is nothing to lose. I removed the thermal pad and used a huge blob of Arctic silver to fill in the tremendous gap. I also cleaned off the old crap on the CPU and used AS5 on that as well.

What I find pretty dumb is the fact that they only used 1 screw on 1 side to secure the GPU side of the heatsink. Before putting everything back together I managed to boot the laptop with the laptop fully taken apart. I connected the keyboard, battery, ram and screen without putting anything back together.

I booted into Vista and ran GPU-Z. The first thing I noticed is that the GPU temps were at around 70c vs the 109c that it used to be at. This is still hot, but a huge improvement. I then opened up Core Temp to view CPU temps. The CPU temps were now at 30c to 35c on both cores at idle. At full load the CPU would hit 43c. This is also a huge improvement.

I am now certain that I can bring the GPU temps down even further if I used a good thermal pad plus maybe some AS5. I just now need to see where I can find a thermal pad which is the right thickness. What's weird is that I swore these thermal pads were only used for video RAM, not an actual GPU core.

I'm even thinking of welding on a solid piece of copper onto the heatsink to further close the gap between the GPU and heatsink. It has been said that this heatsink is just too small to handle the heat from both chips, but I think it's sufficient for at least some decent and not perfect temps. Not only that but the CPU/GPU fan is always spinning but at very low speeds. I wonder how much better the temps could be if I had a way of spinning the fan up my self to 100% (only as a test because I know the fan kills the battery as it is)

Anyone have any ideas on what to do now? Anyone know what program I can use to control the fan speed? Speedfan can't do it, neither can that ik8fangui Dell fan control thingy program. I also want to know a way that I can underclock this GPU. Riva Tuner doesn't seem to work at all, nor does coolbits. Anyone know where to buy thermal pads?

 

I would NOT run the laptop how it is now. AS5 was not designed to be used in that manner. If any of it shifts or falls out, you are going to have a fried GPU. Best option is to do as you said and get a little copper shim to put in there then use a very thin layer of AS5.

 

Copper shim glued on with Arctic Silver Adhesive and regular Arctic Silver between the shim and GPU would be the ideal way to go. not sure about welding. Like nickc said, you're running a serious risk using that much thermal compound.