2370 [Over]heating issue

Like most of the people on here, I've been having some seriously HOT issues with my Averatec 2370. I recall it getting fairly hot when I first bought it, but over the last year or so, it was getting to a point where the computer would shut down and you couldn't pick up the laptop till it cooled down. Tried several things that was listed on this site and from other sites, including cleaning the cooling fan, but nothing worked. Didn't want to go to the point of replacing the thermal paste just yet.

Started googling the issue again today and by chance, came across a site [computerrepairguys.com or something similar] that had a similar issue posted. They'd mentioned that the R1.05 BIOS Version that their 2370 had was ultimately found to be the culprit - something to do with bad ACPI code in the R1.05 BIOS. Their fix was to revert back to the R1.04 BIOS the 2370 came with. Having tried everything so far, I figured why not give it a shot. After about 30 minutes of trying to find someplace to get the R1.04 Bios from, I finally reverted it back to the older bios. It's been approx. 3 hours now since I reverted it back and it's consistently running about 20C cooler than before. My previous temperature recordings was around 76C - 83C depending on how many windows I had open. It has now been running between 44C - 51C, occasionally peaking up to 54C when doing high intensity jobs. I'll keep an eye on this over the next few days and post my findings here. If anyone else wants to try this, be sure to post your results so that we can compare the numbers.

My system details: 2370 w/Windows XP Media Center Edition SP3
Bone Stock with 1G Memory. I have done the AMD Core 2 Duo Optimizing as posted on many sites.

 

FYI-
Neither R1.04 nor R1.05 ACPI code works worth a crap with Vista. R1.09 (the Everex variant) does work well with Vista (although I suspect the code could still be improved). R1.09 CPU temps are comparible with the previous message regarding R1.04 temps.

I am going to guess that the temps posted in the original message of this thread are CPU temps. Redoing the thermal paste properly will help a bit with CPU temps, but the real gains are with GPU temps.

The Nvidia Go 6100 GPU will typically always run about 30C hotter than the CPU with the OEM installation, but if you follow my instructions "Improve 237x GPU cooling" [URL="http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=306840"[/URL] you will reduce your GPU temp by 10-15C, regardless which BIOS firmware you use.

 

That's correct Jim, those temps are CPU Temps. I meant to put that when I was typing that in, but completely slipped my mind. After trying Vista a couple of times, I finally gave up on it - for one, needs too much resources to make it run [2G memory], and even with that, most of my applications run slower than with Win XP ME with 1G. I had tried the Everex R1.09 BIOS from the averatec-forums.com. Issue I ran into with that is that my Factory Restore CD would not work the minute I installed the Everex BIOS. Windows would boot up and immediately want to activate online, before I'd even had a chance to set up the wireless.

So, for the moment, the R1.04 BIOS seems to be working on my system and since yesterday, the system has been running considerably cooler, the fan doesn't turn up as much as it used to when I had the R1.05 BIOS. One of these days, I'll go ahead and try your instructions on GPU Cooling.

By the way, I just looked up my GPU Temp under Display Properties... Advanced Settings... GeoForce Go 6100, and it shows the GPU Temp to be around 75C - 79C.

 

yeah, your GPU temps are typical for an OEM heatsink install. I have yet to hit 70C since switching to the copper shim and properly prepped & applied Arctic Silver 5. My GPU typically stays in the low-mid 60's with an occasional jump to the upper 60's.

My installation is originally XP MCE 2005, using the 'Express' Vista upgrade. I had 2GB of RAM from the start. I tweaked both OSes and drivers to the best of my abilities. I honestly have to say that once running to my standards, Vista subjectively outperforms XP. I also moved to Vista Ultimate (still 32bit).

When my original 2370 died, I replaced it with the functional twin, the Everex ST5340T (the source of the R1.09 BIOS code by the way). I have also swapped out the original hard drive with a Western Digital 5400 RPM 250GB unit (wow, between the higher RPM and especially the perpendicular recording, the performance improvement was very noticeable). I recently swapped out my 553Mhz 2 X 1GB RAM for 667Mhz 2 X 2GB RAM for another noticeable (if not as spectacular) performance boost.
Recent Vista upgrades are also available for the Nvidia nForce chipset, the Ralink wireless card, and the Realtek Audio. I keep both my Registry and harddrive highly tuned.

 

Sounds interesting Jim. Here in the near future, I'll probably attempt the procedures you'd outlined for the GPU Cooling. When I got my 2370, I'd picked up 2 of these - one for myself and the other for my wife. While mine is consistently used for 13 - 15 hours a day, sometimes more, it still has worked with little issues - outside the occasional shutting down when running in Safe mode or under intensive use. My wife's 2370 on the other hand, gets little to limited use - maybe 2 hours a day, and has the dreaded issue where it goes to sleep indefinitely and we have to insert the Setup CD and leave it powered on for hours. I considered doing upgrades to my 2370 in the past - get more memory, more efficient higher speed HDDs, etc. but each time I felt that I'd be throwing money away when I could just as well go get a new DELL, Acer or Toshiba and not have to contend with the issues. Didn't you have the same going to sleep issues in the past with your 2370? Were you able to overcome that in any way?

 

My 2370 sits dead in a drawer. It went sleep and never returned. Earlier that day it had been hit with a power spike through the wired Ethernet (power was surge protected) It was a few weeks past warranty and I knew better than to even try to get Averatec to repair it.

I am on my 3rd Everex ST5340T. The first unit lost wi-fi within a month and Everex swapped it. The second got hit with the typical 2370 'sleepize' and Everex replaced the motherboard under warrranty - the the tech made such a mess that I insisted, and got, another replacement. At least Everex, unlike Averatec, DOES listen to its customers.

Needless to say, I do believe there is a design flaw in these units and in some small way hope mine dies again under warranty at a more convenient time (Murphy's Law says otherwise). Hopefully I will get Everex to substitute a different (and at least equivalent) model.

Based on experiences with Dell's home-buyer customer service, they will never get a nickel of my money.

 

Ahhh.... for some reason, I thought your 2370 had awoken. However, I did not realize that the twin of the 2370 - Everex - has the same dreaded sleep issue. While replacement is nice, it still makes me wonder as to what the actual "cause" of this issue might be? So, contrary to my original thoughts that using an Everex R1.09 BIOS on the 2370 might solve the dreaded sleep issue, this wouldn't necessarily be true?

By the way, not to veer off the original subject, I'm pleased to note that now 3 days with the R1.04 BIOS on the 2370, it has still run consistently cooler than it ever has with the R1.05 BIOS - and by this, I'm referring to the CPU and HDD temps as reported by SpeedFan and MOBMeter. With the R1.05 BIOS, approx. 30 minutes into normal use - browsing, email, etc., the CPU temp would reach upto 75C - 80C and HDD temp upto 73C. So far, with the R1.04 BIOS, they have not gone over 54C, even with continued intensive use - High speed downloads using Download Accelerators, Video Playback, Video Encoding,etc. Although this could be co-incidental, so far, I'm pleased with the result. My next plan is to try out your GPU Cooling - hopefully, soon.

Thanks again for all the input Jim.

 

FYI, the temp monitoring tool I use is the freeware CPUID Hardware Monitor (HWmonitor ver. 1.10.0, driver version 129). It displays the current, min & max ACPI temp, the individual CPU core temps, and the GPU temp. This app is completely passive, there are no controls for jiggering fan speeds, system voltages, etc..

 

Appreciate the info Jim. Just looked it up and downloaded it; got the 1.11 version from their website and it doesn't show the GPU temps. Did some more searching and found the 1.10 version, and it still doesn't show any GPU Temps. Did you have to install a seperate driver?

 

I know the temp sensor is there in your 2370. Either the BIOS R1.04, or the system board driver version you have installed does not supply this information for the application to pick it up. Sorry.

 

Do you still have a copy of R1.04 - I'm using XP Media and everyone is talking about flashing with the Everex BIOS for usage with Vista, but I'm gonna stick with XP. My laptop too started heating up to the point where i had to buy a cooling pad - twice. I can't seem to find R1.04 anywhere though - I'm having the issue where the laptop doesn't always boot up, and I'm hoping that maybe R1.04 will help with that. If you could email it to me at billymadison51 at gmail - I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks guys