7970m overheating? np9170 can easily reach 90 °C?

hey guys!

I'm with my Sager np9170 (with 7970m) two weeks ago. But only last weekend I was able to test its performance in games. And i'm worried.

I have noticed a performance in games 10-15% lower than the Notebookcheck.

I installed the afterburner to check the temperature, and the first two minutes of gameplay (on DIRT 3 and MW 3) the temperature reaches 90 °C!! It remains in this range of 90-92 °C

I tried to reinstall the drivers (from dvd and from site), but the but the situation remains the same. The ambient temperature (brazil) is around 20-25 °C. 7970m idle temperature is about 40-45 °C.

So this temps (90°C on gaming) is correct? Or am I in trouble?

 

I think that's too high, you should try and reapply the thermal paste. My gtx 675m maxes at 88- 89 °C with ambient temperatures at 30-32 °C at full load, usually it's about 85 °C and that's also too much but I'm too lazy to order some paste and and worried I'll screw something

 

way too high, a stock 7970m barely reaches 70c whilst gaming. Remove the heatsink, remove old paste and repaste it with a decent thermal compound.

 

Well advised.

Your 7970m shouldnt reach the mid 80's under load as it's been proven to run much cooler than the previous cards generation.

 

My 670m hasn't gotten any higher than 73 degrees while gaming...(Diablo 3, not super demanding...) clean out your vents and re-apply some paste.

 

if its only 2 weeks old then it wont be a build up of dust yet as this is one of the main culprits of high temps.
as mentioned what thermal paste did your supplier use? the standard stuff or did you pay extra the upgrade to a better paste.

time to rally the resellers that charge extra for upgraded paste. the standard stuff is just no good now a days for these new gpu's

 

I ordered my sager with IC diamond paste. This a good paste, right? Is there a better paste?

 

think that is the upgraded paste so its not that unless it wasnt applied properly so is not making its correct contact.
im not sure which is the best paste out there at the moment. anyone else advise on this.

 

try some other temperature monitoring software which you can find in my signature below just to compare.

ive just reread your post and correct me if im wrong but will temps go upto 90c within 2 minutes of gameplay. that sounds a bit excessive to me.

 

Yes, after 2 minutes of gameplay i reach 90°C. Using furmark reaches 90°C after 1 minute...
I used msi afterburner and hwinfo to check the temps...

 

Diamond IC is amongst the very best currently, and is worth every penny.

90C is a bit high however you may be even worse off, if your not getting full performance it may even be throttling to keep the temps lower then damaging levels.

You really need to take a serious look at the GPU heatsink as stated, is that doesn't fix it, then you must send it back under warranty. Progressive issues can arise from constant over heating, I have personally had it happen.

You should not be able to max out a Vidcards temps unless you running Furmark. No game pounds a card as hard, and its a good way to test your cooling. But DO NOT try it on a system over heating during game play.

 

I´ll try to take a look at heatsink, but what i´m looking for? Fitting issues?

 

See how much paste was used if you are going to unscrew and repaste. If not, check if there's any dust in the vent.

 

My 675m downclocks at 97*. Not sure if this holds true for the 7970. Mine also pegs the temps at 96* (over clocked, over volted) 2 mins in fumark. You will see the card throttle while running fumark. Just because you got upgraded paste, doesn't mean you got a quality paste job. It's not going to blow up at 90*, but it shouldn't be that high, something is wrong. What settings and whats your FPS while gaming? Check your power adapter, is it 220w, is it getting extremely hot?

 

What solved my problem was sticking multiple Ram heatsinks onto the copper plate/heat transfer pipelines. Those are made from aluminium. The copper 4mm thick ones are mostly available only in China. Gonna take a while and I couldn't wait so I went with Aluminium. And top temp was 85C at 732/1500 @0.80v. I'll upload the pic these days.

 

That actually sounds like a possible fan failure.

We had an Asus not too long ago that had a fan failure right out of the box (very rare actually) and running Furmark the temps shot straight up to 95C and leveled off, a quick visual check confirmed that it was a fan failure. Got a replacement fan installed and it was good as new, temps dropped down to the 70-79C range.

Check your fans to make sure they are spinning up properly, and as others have mentioned, check your thermal paste job.

Contact your reseller for RMA if necessary if fans or temp sensor seems to be the culprit.

 

I removed the lid of the notebook (did not get to unscrew the heatsink). I did not notice anything unusual. The fan has no apparent defect, and is running apparently normal.

The only thing that caught my attention were two small black spots on the heatsink. (upper left corner of the third image


-
foto2.jpg picture by spettow - Photobucket
-
foto.jpg picture by spettow - Photobucket

So, can you see anything wrong?

 

Nope, it looks like some smudged inking from the QC stamping on the heatsink pipes there.

I would certainly check the thermal paste, toss some pic up here in the forums.

Be sure to have new thermal paste ready to re-apply as well as some rubbing alcohol and a lint-free cloth to remove the old paste before re-applying.

Let us know how that works out for you, if you notice a difference.

 

Definitely a thermal paste problem. Pictures look fine.

 

Repaaaaste ! 90°C definitely too hot !

 

I had the same problem with my NP9150 with the 7970. After having the laptop for 4-5 days, I played D3 for 1 hr and didn't notice the fans were really spinning hard due to my noise cancelling ear buds.

I checked the temps and the 7970M hit a high of 106 and hovered around 94 on heavy load. I freaked out. I removed the heatsinks to the cpu/gpu and applied some Arctic Silver which I had on hand. Temps avg 70-72 now on heavy load. Paste and it's application makes a big difference.

 

Guys, I decided to send my equipment to my reseller. They will check the heatsinks, fans and the application of thermal paste.

I could not find a good thermal paste in my town, then decided to send the equipment to the seller. Meanwhile, I'll buy one IC Diamond for possible future reapplication!

Once the dealer give me an answer, I'll post here! Hopefully it's only problem in thermal paste!


Thanks!

 

The diamond 7 is the best termal solution in the world, for the ppl say about it.

BR

 

Guys, my seller replaced the thermal paste, but the temperature stays at 90 degrees celsius, and they claim that this is the standard temperature.

To make a return, they require me to prove that the 7970m does not reach 90 degrees running Furmark.

Can someone please run Furmark at 7970m (resolution 1920x1080) and take a printscreen between the middle and end of test 15 minutes?

 

Wow...

I've been looking to get a 9170. Please say who your vendor is, I want to know who to avoid.

 

Getting my machine delivered tomorrow so I don't mind giving that a go once i've installed windows on it and all that..

 

My 7970 on my P170EM also reaches averages around 90 degrees celcius when playing Diablo 3, idle is around 45. My 3610QM reaches ~65 when playing D3?

I dont think the fan is broken, as i can feel it blowing hot air out. Should i repaste?

 

Definitely...

 

My CPU temps are fine or should i also apply new paste there?

 

Cpu temps are fine! Don´t worry about it.
Even 75 degrees is perfectly normal

 

That's funny... I play SC2 (about as graphics intense as D3) at like 75 C max...

 

Same max has been 74ish...............though i was hoping it would be a bit cooler darn 15inch case haha.

 

Who did you buy from??

 

But it will hit 90 running fumark....

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I think you'll struggle to prove it, look at my one I'm also not worried, this is an extremely high load for the GPU, and it is a laptop of course it's gonna get hot:

 

Be careful with IC Diamond as it is supposedly very slightly abrasive and can damage the surface of your CPU/GPU cores. It's more suited to a stationary desktop than an on the move laptop.

Personally I'm sticking with Prolimatech PRO-PK1.

 

I always thought the HD 7970M is cooler than GTX 675M (tops at 91C without cooling mod), looks like it's the other way around . Don't know what GTX 680M's temp is going to look like.

 

Well I want to chime in. I got to try my np9150 with the 7970 and the temps are not as good as I hoped either. I did get the IC Diamond paste.

The room I am running the tests in is about 78f and the laptop is on a table all by it self with the vents all clear.

Here are some temps so far :

Diablo 3 it gets up to 77c max and hovers around 72c-73c
Battlefield 3 it gets up to 89c at max hovers around 84c-86c
Heaven Benchmark everything maxed got to 89c
Furmark 15 minute benchmark, 94c max

 

100C on Furmark... That's 9C over a GTX 675M with 0 cooling mod

 

I just updated my post. Re ran furmark three times and never got over 94c. The only thing I changed was I updated to the beta AMD 7970 drivers.

 

I just received my 150em with 7970m and it was going to 88c in furmark, so I repasted and now it barely reaches 80c. It had IC Diamond on GPU originally.

 

Ok well I think this is all fairly conclusive that this card runs hot, my one had arctic mx 4 on it too I think... I would put the variations people are experiencing down to slight differences in each card, different thermal pastes, and different environments, humidity and ambient temperatures for example, I live in a flat where the sun is always on the front room during the summer, and it warms up a fair bit.

As a comparison I tested my desktop system using kombuster with the same settings with asus 6950s and their aftermarket cooler and a large tower case full of 120mm fans, and that still reaches 80c on the same test, so for a laptop in that confined space, with in comparison to a desktop probably pretty bad cooler and heatsink it's not doing too badly...

 

Try propping the back of the laptop up while gaming. This has helped considerably with my 675m.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Since the IC Diamond thermal paste upgrade didn't help for you, what would you guys recommend for me to do since I'm going to buy the NP9150 with the 7970m?

 

How To Keep Your Notebook Cool: Laptop Lifts Review | Tech|Inferno

I just came across this, what do you guys think? Would it work on this laptop? The benchmark results look really impressive, and the principal seems to make sense, so I'm thinking of getting some, as long as they don't interfere with other parts underneath the laptop

 

Use some gatorade caps. Raises higher, costs less. I get about 5-7c cooler with the caps raising the back of my lappy than without.

 

it's usually the application, not the paste - even with crap paste you can have very low temps if its applied properly. Either way right now my temps are nice and low, but my laptop is suffering from some serious GPU throttling / under utilization issues...

 

Or if you absolutely want to stick something to lift your laptop, go to a hardware store and look for stick-on rubber pads for furniture. Should cost a fraction and do the exact same thing, just that the packaging won't mention "laptop" on it.

 

Haha ok just did that, made zero difference running kombuster, i won't waste my money in that case

 

I have some experience with Zalman notebook coolers. Should do the trick if you really want to lower your temps.