Znote 6324 throttling - serious CPU themal problems

I bought a Znote 6324 a while back and I'm experiencing some severe heat problems with it. It got Intel core 2 duo 2.0GHz which is providing quite some heat. After a minute of a stress tool (Orthos), the heat of the processors reach 94c, and an additional minute later it starts throttling. I'm currently experimenting with decreasing the voltage, but the problem persists even at 1.10v (which is about 80% of stock). This can't be acceptable.

I've heard that the GPU and CPUs don't have any thermal grease between them and the heatpipe. Is this true? If it is, applying some should help alleviate the problem. Also, I've heard that the 6224/6324 series have had themal problems before with the 2.2 and 2.0GHz processors and that changes were later made to the assembly method to improve the cooling, is this true and would it be possible to have it sent back to the factory to have some better cooling retrofitted?

 

I had some heat problems, but mainly with the graphics card heatpipe having too much thermal paste unevenly applied. I replaced the paste with Arctic Silver and adjusted the heatpipe to give a better, parallel, fit to the GPU core and it dropped my temperature by 15C under full load and about 4 or 5C idle. I haven't looked at the processor's heatpipe as it seems to work ok at the moment. Maybe as the paste gets baked I will replace it with Arctic Silver as well. The paste Zepto uses looks very similar to Arctic Silver but they put way too much on. Have you looked at the video on their website showing them building of a laptop. They just put a large blob on the core's and glibly slap the hetpipe on top. Not enough care for my liking.

 

Zepto does use Arctic Silver, it was discussed in another topic a while back.

 

Ah, but did they read the instructions?

 

My first thought would be to check if the cooling system is getting blocked up. There's a possibility that the heatsink is getting blocked by fluff and then the fan won't be able to blow the heat away. I would take a look under the keyboard (see attached photo).

John

 

i also noticed this (6224 here)
realy stresstesting the cpu (for example with TAT) results in throttling but i never head a throttle in practical use

@john ratsey
obvisously you've opened your book, how did you do so?
heared something about removing the keyboard-screws (including one behind the RAM) and tryed but didn't know how to go on and dont want to damage something, can you shortly explain how to do so?

 

andy, the video for Zepto are shot only for promotional use. The AS5 isn't applied that careless during normal production.

 

See this thread for more guidance. If you have got the screws removed then you need to carefully lever the front of the keyboard towards the back until it will lift up clear of the palmrest. Then slide the keyboard forwards until the back is free. Then turn it over.

It's like riding a bicycle - very easy after the first time!

John

 

Yes we do use AS5 , but not as showed in the video. We put on a small amount, and flatten it out to a very thin layer. Just as cooling paste sould be applied.

 

but why did u apply it the wrong way in the promo video??

 

I'm affraid that wasn't the case on GPU. It was much thicker than it should be. Not any more though.

 

Good question. That video was made before i started working at Zepto.

 

@john ratsey
thanks, worked perfect and system has quiet down

 

Thanks for the feedback (I presume you are referring to removing the keyboard and clearing the muck).

Fujitsu seem to be the first manufacturer to take action on this dust blockage problem and the S6510 includes a removable filter (see the attached PDF file with extracts from the manual). I wonder how long before other manufacturers follow? It's particularly relevant to the higher-powered notebooks with big airflows.

John

 

It wasn't an actual production assistant being filmed in that shot. They where busy with the actual production of the customer notebooks at the time...

 

yes and it was sorely needed^^

very interesting, hopefully other manufactures will adapt that

 

I did open up the laptop, and looked at the thermal paste on the GPU. It was far too thickly applied (over 1.5 mm thick), and so I reapplied it properly.

Cleaned the die and heatpipe with alcohol then reapplied AS5 with a razor. It measured 97c before when running Crysis for 1 hour. 93c after. Nothing huge, but considering that the paste does cost some money, the short time it takes to apply properly and that it's marketed as a "gaming" computer, I feel it's perhaps worth doing it right in the first place. I don't think it can get much better than 93c as the heatpipe is severly underdimensioned.

 

I got the same sort of improvement on my laptop. I now no longer get more than 92C after several hours of gaming. I am much more confident in my laptop now that the temp is stable at around these figures. Just a shame I had to reapply the paste. It should of been done right first time.

 

A year or two back I replaced the CPU cooler in a friend's desktop computer because it was so noisy. I had bought one with a low noise fan. However, when I came to do the change-over I discovered a thick (~1mm) layer of thermal compound between CPU and heatsink. I suspect that this was the cause of the noise - system making fan run at full speed to try to get the heat through what was almost a insulating layer. Anyway, I replaced the cooler and put a very thin layer of thermal compound. It's been very quiet since then.

John

 

Something to remember about the thermal paste. It is there to fill the tiny air pockets that exist between the CPU/GPU core/heatspreader and the heatpipe/heatsink. Nothing else. Too much paste and you start to reduce the transfer of heat from CPU/GPU to heatsink/heatpipe.

 

I've just contacted our production about this today to be sure it's done properly and they are having lessons in it periodically to keep the productions assistants on their toes when it comes to apply thermal paste

 

It's good to know someone at Zepto is paying attention to the feedback/problems being reported here. I would do it on the "Zepto Inside" forum but I can't read it properly and there seems to be a lot more interest here. Any idea on if there is a new bios in the pipelines to help the high Defferred Procedure Call problems with the 6324W laptops?

 

what do you mean by ""zepto inside" forum"?

 

Zepto's own forum displays "Zepto Forum-Community Inside" in the title bar. Thats all, I just shortened it.

 

okay, was just a little bit confused
btw: it's not realy zeptos "own" forum, as its not hosted, administrated, sponsored or anything else by zepto (as a company)
(just for general information^^)

there is a english board, too

well sry fpr advertising^^

 

Not many people use the english forum. I thought that because it was decorated in a Zepto advertising manner that it was Zepto's own forum, I was also informed by someone at Zepto that it would be the place to go for information on their products and I even had an email invite when I bought my notebook. Clearly this forum has much more through traffic. .

 

I really wish the main language of zeptoforum would change to english.
I won't be using it as long as it's german, there's just too much frustration when I know there's some usefull info that I don't understand a word off

 

well zeptoforum.com is the domain, not the forum
the forum is privately (financed,) administrated and provided by a member of the german branch (with an emphasis on privately^^)
i just wanted to say, that the forum is not actualy belonging to zepto like a telefon number, or an email because in the past it was often abused to contact the german zepto branch and as a consequence, is free for everyone and everything (well, as far as its legal^^)
i hope it gets clear what i mean(?) my english isnt very well ;D

@nania
it think the problem isn't the language in general, it's the (nearly total) absence of english speaking users, or better: users who need to speak english
I can just advise everyone to simply ask in the forum if he/she needs help, even if the english part seems to be a little "empty" there are many users who read and can answer

i'm advertising (again^^)

 

It's really refreshing to know that you guys are monitoring this forum. The fact you use AS5 does show you strive to deliver quality, and the 4c improvement I got by redoing it isn't as bad as the 17c change I got by redoing my old retailer-installed shuttle processor.

For people seeking to fix their computers, this is a good guide: http://www.arcticsilver.com/ins_route_step2amdas5.html

 

That is exactly what I am seeing, My temperatures of the GPU are dropping steadily by 1 or 2 degrees per week. So far I've dropped 9C compared to before reapplying it. Maybe it is about to settle but I do use my notebook every day, all day, for work and then gaming in the evening so I guess I am accelerating the "seating" period quoted by Arctic Silver's manufacturers (they cliam 200hrs before best transfer acheived).

 

Well I still far from blame the temperature or the cooling system for all these problems really. A new FUNCTIONAL zepto bios would however be needed for all this crap to fall into order. Ive said it before, and I will say it again... It´s sad that zepto claims to sell very good gaming laptops when they actually are selling people a box with a good screen full of errors.

whats even worse is it doesnt help sending your laptop in to them, because they are slow as hell, a normal maintaince which 100% will only contain a new arctic paste redo will take around 2months !! even though they claim its 1 week... dont trust them, ive had my share of disapointments on that area.

Basicly they just hold up a strait face and hope it all blows over... which means, hoping the next series proberly with a 9xxx card has less bugs and isnt so hard to get a bios working for. Right now all we need is a working bios, and that they cant do, which makes my several thousand dollar laptop worth nothing! its sick that such things are even legal... to keep selling products that they know are full of errors, and most of those who dont complain, either dont know this place, or dont use it fully for gaming where the temps, heat and problems really come to show...... Zepto just fix this issue once and for all, how hard can it be ?!?

 

thomas as mentioned before it is not all 6324W's that have this issue. You keep making it sound like it's a general issue and it's not. Also as mentioned before we are working on this and are not just trying to ignore it quite the contrary.
Getting a 100% working BIOS is unfortunately not just like snapping your fingers, as you sometimes make it sound. We might have a fully working BIOS that works as it should in our test environments, but as soon as we let our beta testers test the BIOS is might act differently on their systems, and then it's back to the drawing boards on getting some more fixes implemented or the already implemented features fine tuned.

On another note, if a company where to send out a 100% functional product without any bugs at all from the beginning, then 98% of the products released on the market would never have been released at all. It is just not possible to release a fully working product with a market that is advancing as fast as it is.

About you comment on the repair time, then once again i can tell you it does certainly not take 2 months to redo the cooling paste. I haven't heard of a single case that has gone over the expected repair time in the last 3 months unless it has been waiting for spare parts that have been hard to get a hold of and those cases are rare now.


EDIT: and with that comment I'll be wishing you all a happy Easter holiday, and I'll be back again on tuesday the 25th of March.

 

Have you guys thought about making your beta bioses public ? it shoulds like your doing all your can to fix this, and eventually does fix it ? but then shoot its down again, because it doesnt fix it for all your beta testers?

How about making the beta bioses available for everyone with a "USE AT OWN RISK" note?

Point is, if it actually does work for some, why not let those 2 or 3 out of 50 actually get a chance of having their computer become worth the money ?!

At the moment those of us with problems can only sit tight and watch our laptops get older by the day, and scream here to be told that "we do all we can"....

Another thing, I dont see how the beta bioses can be any worse as the ones out now, like I said, its at people own risk?

 

My personal situation isn't as bad as Thomas', but I do agree on many of
his points. Specifically, with the 6 series seemingly being somewhat buggy
for many (I know not near all) it would suggest it should be yanked
from the shelves... or 'something.'

Just lending another voice to his argument.

 

Another problem with this, is that a BIOS can potentially damage your hardware, if it has severe bugs. Unfortunally it has been seen before. So by letting a small amount of people try out the BETA BIOS, before releasing it to customers we can avoid having like 200 notebooks comming in with fried LAN, or something like that.

 

I really don't care anymore. All I have heard are empty rumors... I have had my laptop for 8 MONTHS and it hasn't been fixed!
I have put my laptop up for sale on several sites, and as mentioned many places before:
I won't ever get a Zepto again, neither will I recommend it to anyone.'
I'm sick of waiting, and having a 11k dkr office machine!
If Zepto was to offer a refund I would take it in a heartbeat, but one can only dream

 

Exactly... they are just holding us fooled until we give up and the next series is released. Oh and sure products all over the glode are released with bugs, but here were talking about a disfunctional product! we dont sell cars with 3 tires either, though 1 of the windscreens might be broken.

How the hell can a bios damage people hardware?! excuse me, but how is that going to make us trust Zepto to actually fix their products?!?! I dont have any knowledge about coding bioses, but it sounds a bit like you guys dont know what youre doing.....?

 

So you are telling me you dont know what a BIOS is, or what it is doing?

The BIOS is what controls everything in your PC. Just a small glitch in it, can send wrong voltage to some part of the motherboard, and frie something. We wouldnt want that, would we? Thats why we have to test the BIOS's before releasing it to all users.

 

Are you kidding me? Read what i wrote.. I do not know how to CODE a Bios, the rest of the computer it sometimes feels like I and the rest here know just aswell or even better than those who is supposed be the smarter ones.

 

Sorry, but i didnt understand what you just wrote.

But in your last post, you asked how the he*l a BIOS could damage hardware, which led me on the believe you didnt know how a BIOS works.

 

Let me rephrase it for you then on Thomas behalf
It sometimes seems that the users of this forum, does a better job at finding errors/solutions, than the employees at Zepto. The employees here, beeing the "smarter ones".

 

well on german forum we had several people with big support problems for example:
- unrepaired books (which forced the users to another RMA and resulted in (nearly) two month waiting all in all)
- damaged Books (send in for a minor problem, returned with a big scratch or non working sound (or similar) (and often without any repair of the problem they were send in for))
- half repaired books
and so on...

we also got one case waiting for about 3,5 months (december to mid march(and i don't know if it has returned yet))

and RMA is made in DK so it's (mainly) not the fault of the german branch

But in my opinion that's not the biggest problem, it's the bad information policy while or after the RMA.
People don't know, what was changed or whether it was repaired or replaced additionaly they don't know where there book is during the RMA and are not informed if it's going to last longer (for example while zepto is waiting for spare parts).
Besides nearly all problems i know could have been avoided by a little check before sending back.

Not belonging to this but quiet similar is the situation of new books, we've had various books with missing or wrong W-Lan cards, wrong CPUs or even totaly wrong notebooks or orders send.

I'm realy happy with my book but this are things which make me be careful and let me hope, that i will never be forced to a RMA and ruin Zeptos reputation.
In a short pull we've had over 50 people being not confident with the current support (out of maybe 70 or 80 being active and being in a position to judge this in the time in the forum)

just my 2 cent but i remember a time when every notebook was checked before going to the owner and in my opinion it was a better time^^

 

Unfortunally the german support is pretty bad. Not only for the customer, but also for the repair department. Every single machine we get from germany has very little, if any, error description. And often missing RAM, HDD, CPU and other things.

We are in consant contact with the german support, asking them to make better errors descriptions. But unfortunally it has taken a long time, and we are still trying to improve the german support.

 

Perhaps rather than trying to plug a leaky boat up, we should just find
another ship that floats? If you take my meaning.

I know I have.

 

Oh trust me I am

 

Hehe dont worry Grant, I will.... first thing when the new series of laptops is out, size and hardware which im looking for, then this small silly boat will be ALL by itself far far away... until then however, I wont let the sharks laugh at me because my motor is broken.

 

Nania & Thomas:

Too funny! Life preserver life preserver!

 

Surely as people have been having these issues for 8+ months without a fix in sight, its time to consider letting people exchange (or refund) their laptop.

Although it is not just Zepto notebooks experiencing these issues, which leads me to believe its an issue with the santa rosa chipset.

What is downright sad is that brands like Zepto or Asus even, who have a good reputation as somewhat enthusiast brands have no problem treating thier customers like this.

Next time I will just purchase a Dell notebook, because if I am not happy I can just return it or exchange it and have extremely fast, reliable support and pay less for it too.

 

Negz: I can only agree with you.

 

I might have missed if someone have posted this before, but have you tried undervolting? I lost 17C from it and the comp is cool and stable. No performance lost. This is not something you should have to do of course, but it might ease your pain. My CPU never ever goes over 80C now.

EDIT: Whoops, even the first post mentioned that