Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

finally replaced the broken screen bezel on my laptop, I have also put some copper sinks on the gpu and have ordered some more and a few moments ago I purchased some 1mm thermal pads.

Let the modding begin...

 

Ok so I tried to open the the area where where I believe its the cpu or gpu idk im not a computer tech. But its underneath some sort of copper plate so I tried to unscrew it but there are springs in the screws that prevent me from even lefting it can someone help me im really get fustrasted with this heat problem.

 

sigh... i was able to transfer files from my external harddrive few mins ago, went to pee and take a drink, came back and i cannot open it and asks me to format the drive. i just backed up my files of 4 hours =(

 

Yes, duh the copper is used to cool the graphics card.
The springs have nothing to do with it...

There are 4 screws on the GPU, 3 on the CPU and 2 more on the chipset. You need to unscrew them ALL.

I assume you have a plan and know what you're doing about the heat?

 

Lolwut

Ican Has Discuusedd Wit U Issuez?

 

did anyone ran this laptop on a 6970m?

 

been wondering about that, but i'm certainlly not going to waste £300 on a video card, crazy prices. Cost me £70 just for a new bezel, laptop stuff is way over-priced.

 

I'm thinking about updating my ram to 8gb, which manufacturer should I choose? Is PC3-10600 the right model name for a 1333Mhz-clock?

 

Yes it is, the cream of the crop is Kingston hyper-x, otherwise any named brand with a warranty is fine.

 

I can't find any hyperX ram with a 1333mhz clock in my area. Would g.skill ram be ok? Theres Samsung available as well.

 

Hyper-X 1600 will run at 1333 speeds, it will also lower its latencies automatically too.

 

Kingston hyper-X is not really better than some normal ram. I would just go for the g-skill unless your planning on massive FSB CPU overclocking.

 

I have a GX640-260US that's about a year old now, and I want to upgrade it from 4 gb to 8 gb.

Do you guys know where I can pick up the correct type of memory to upgrade?

 

A computer shop.

 

Hi guys,

Back after a while (a year perhaps?). The whitebook is holding up well so far. I bit the bullet and decided to get an i5 580M QS on e-bay for $156 shipped. The i3/i5 ES I had on here was just not cutting it for my calculations (Matlab). I did not want to deal with heat issues and given that comparable i7's were rather expensive, I decided to go this route.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Cheers!

 

Keep us updated about it!

 

just finished my cooling mod.



used spare zalman vga ram sinks I had in a cuboard, switched from 1mm thermal pads to 0.5mm, the 1mm ones looked too thick, one side of the gpu plate was not all the way down when screwed in but now all sides are equal. Will test temps shortly and report back.

 

Can you still get the cover on? I got my heatsinks today but chickened out on actually attaching them as I was worried about not being able to get the cover back on due to the added height.
(My heatsinks are 1mm less high - 5mm rather than 6mm - so if it isn't giving you problems I should be completely safe!)

 

You can do some slight modifications to the backplate to get it to fit with most of the ramsinks he has on there.

 

yup, no problems getting the cover back on, they don't even touch the plastic.

 

Confident after the responses (thank you!) I added some heat sinks as well.
Seems to make a 2-3°c difference on the GPU. Ran out of heat sinks so couldn't do the CPU but it doesn't really need it either, might do it sometime in the future however as these heat sinks are dirt cheap!

Might as well post all my experiences as it might be of help to others

My first attempt at lowering temps (well mostly want to see how everything looks so I had to repaste anyway.. didn't have very high expectations).
Used some really old zalman goop.. probably too old seeing as it didn't make any difference in temperatures, still it's nice to see the before/after compared to what MSI uses by default.

Thermal paste as by MSI self (RMA'd it once so not the default factory goop job)


Cleaned it up:


How I applied it myself and how it looked when removing everything again about a week later


The interesting stuff!
Final repaste, dropped temps by about 10 degrees Celsius. Repasted/Reapplied thermal padding on everything.. with a few differences. All the video card memory now has thermal paste instead of a thermal pad and the same goes for the southbridge. Also added 2 layers of thermal pad on the top right, what you don't see is the third layer as that was applied to the contact surface of the heatsink itself (replaced the yellow'ish stuff in the very first pic). Yes 3 layers is a lot, in the normal configuration it doesn't contact anything! Still only 1 layer on the chips that really need it.
Thermal paste: Arctic cooling MX-2
Thermal pad: Deal Extreme heat sink thermal silicone paste (yes, it's a pad, not a paste)


Finally the heat sinks, these dropped the GPU temp by about 2-3°c. If you want to make 100% sure they stay in place power up the system, let it heat up a bit.. let it cool down again (one 'heat cycle'). Noticed they could slide a bit if you apply pressure while the system is still hot... also worth noting, they conduct real well so if what you're sticking them on is hot you might burn your fingers
Heat sinks: Deal Extreme pure copper pc memory heat spreader

 

I tried those heat sinks as well, but wasn't impressed with them and removed them, that's when I remembered I had several zalman ram sinks, I believe fan shaped sinks work better at heat dispersal. (i'm sure i've read somewhere that fan shaped heat sinks are good)

 

megaquote!
They're quite good, heatsinks are all about increasing the contact surface to the surrounding air. These are very compact and the fins aren't very big so per piece they might lose out to the zalman heatsinks. On the other hand, these are copper instead of painted aluminum.

But let's face it's the difference they make in total is already so small that the difference of one vs the other is going to be minute!

 

well the zalman ones have made a much better difference than the copper ones, the idle temps dropped around 5-10*c, loads temps haven't changed much, the fan doesn't come on a much as it did when gaming.

 

my idle temps were 57-58 degrees until after i updated to service pack 1 the idle temps went up to 66 and its burning my face

 

stop sticking your face over the vent then.

 

im not... the air just blows towards me somehow. but anyway i restarted afew times and its fine now

 

lol, was joking. Anyway, sounds weird that the hot air is blowing towards you, should only come out of the right side of the laptop.

 

Hello Guys, I just added copper shim (~.6-.8mm)drilled bunch of holes. (MX-4)

my idling tempereture is at 53C whic turns on and off fan periodically.
When i run furmark temperatures goes to 90C max.

Do i need to modifiy bios in order to reduce idling temperatures or add thickner copper shim? ( the noise from the fam that turns on and off periodically is pretty annoying)

Oh and 1 more question what would be the best 8Gb ram sticks to buy for Ram upgrade?

 

Furmark is an extreme case of utilizing the GPU. Your GPU will probably never hit 90C while gaming if it does so under FURMARK. No matter how you mod the BIOS, temps will shoot through the roof with Furmark. No need to worry about it.

As for the RAM, it makes no difference, just go with the cheapest DDR3 you can find.

 

is your video card stable @ 750/1100?

 

is there any chance to change the voltage value of the graphics card with the amd gpu clock tool? I can only change the engine and memory settings.

 

I think so. after running furmark for 15 min, the highest temperature was around 93-95C

The thing is, when idling the laptop cannot go below 53C, after which it turns on and off every 10 sec. Very annoying.
I wonder if this can be fixed by undervolting? Or improved copper shim should do the job.
( I had .8mm there and looks like it had pretty good contact with GPU, ( after removing it almost all paste was outside the die)


Update :
removed heatsink placed .27mm copper strips on both sides of video ram(. .35mm small aluminum sinks on the parts hehind gddr ( are those shraders?) at the back. right now
running furmark for 30 min x-treeme burn in test the stats are 90/96/93.
Havent O'clocked yet.
Any comments on how good temperatures are?
Can anyone comment on the temperature results?

 

did you remove your back cover when running furmark?

 

I think so, yep. But I have drilled a tons of hole in the bottom case so it shouldnt make a big difference.

 

can you take a picture of the holes in the backplate? or is there a picture in the thread already? Thanks in advance

 

I dont have a digital camera but I will draw schematics.
Do u plan to make the same mode?

 

I think your temps are quite convincing, so why not

 

Good luck then.
I am not sure is thats what other people are getting after their mods.
Remeber some claimed 70C in furmark. O.O

 

I have one more question.
Has anyone updated to latest Vbios version? i think it is Ver: 031.
Where can I find changelog?

 

mine idles 46-47*c and that's sitting on my lap.

 

Did u modify your bios by lowering voltage?
What mods did u do?
Cooling Pad?

 

is there any kind of update or something that i have to do to get the full power of the laptop? playing on low resolution to get smooth gameplay is making me sick from the blurry textures

 

0.5mm thermal pads and heat sinks on gpu, cpu.

 

can i inquure about exact thermal pads model?

 

you may;

50x50mm Thermal Gap Filler Pad 0.5mm Thick Adhesive | eBay

 

Anyone know of any programs to overclock and/or undervolt the processor? Also anyway to manually control fans?

Also my laptop was running very warm at almost 100 on cpu and gpu. This laptop used to run around 80 when overclocked and it had a lapped heatsink upgrade from rkcomputer. So I opened it up and used some qtips to get rid of dust in the fan. Then I cut out a rectangle of the backplate right over the fan. Now it doesnt even get to 80 when overclocked. I think the increased airflow helps the most.

 

After installing the video driver restarted at a black screen, no video output or the external monitor!
The worst that windows boots and I can sound off by pressing alt + f4 but black screen!

I have to change the VGA? for so I installed the video driver has it ...

Where to buy a new VGA?

config
PowerPro I 7:22 MSI Laptop MSI MS 1656 = gx 640

VGA TI Mobility Radeon HD5850 ....


I'm from Brazil and here it's hard to get a technical assistance

 

managed to finally oc my 5850's core clock to 850mhz (desktop 5770 speed) by overvolting to 1.155v tried 1.16v but it didn't work.

 

how u overvolt?