Clevo P150HMx GPU Reaching Ridiculous Temps

I've had a Clevo P150HMx (Intel i7 Sandy Bridge, Nvidia 485m, 8 GB RAM, OCZ Vertex 3 SSD) for the past three years or so, and it's always seemed to have one issue in that the GPU gets quite hot.

Idle Temperature: 50 C using the laptop monitor - it'll idle at 70 C with an external monitor as the only display.
Load Temperatures: 90-100 C (Running 'Dota 2' at Medium/Low Settings with 45-60 fps)

Other Symptoms:
Computer will occasionally require a few tries to turn on. Pressing the power button lights the laptop indicators up, but the screen remains black. Thus, I'll press and hold the button to power down and retry until the screen appears. The computer will work fine after reaching the windows screen aside from temperatures. Rarely, after an extended time of gaming, windows will say "Display driver has stopped responding", flicker black a second, and then be sluggish until restart.

The load temperature used to be in the high 80's and has slowly been creeping its way to the mid 90's now. I was told before that high 80's is manageable, but I feel like the temperatures are starting to get a bit ridiculous as the GPU can almost boil water now. I've cleaned off the stock thermal paste and applied Arctic Silver 5 a few times in the laptop's lifespan but it never really helps more than a few degrees. I just replaced the thermal paste again yesterday to no avail. I also cleaned out the two stock fans in the laptop with compressed air. Furthermore, I tried to elevate the laptop at the front and very back (taking care to not cover bottom vents) about an inch and have placed a fan on the table next to the laptop. The laptop only has ever been used on solid/flat surfaces.

I've spoke with the original sellers and they aren't willing to help unless I pay them as apparently my laptop is 1 month out of warranty. I would be extremely grateful if anyone could provide a possible solution. This laptop was rather expensive, and I'm rather short on money at the moment (I feel like sending it in for service would be expensive too). I'd love to be able to use it for at least another year or two as I might not be able to replace it for a while, but these temperatures/symptoms seem to indicate there's a problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Verify there's no dust build up on the heatsinks.

Verify the pasting was done proper for the paste you used.

Double check the solder for the chipset and that it doesn't appear to be pulling away anywhere.

The Geforce 300 and 400 series GPU's ran ridiculously hot in general, and if they ran too hot too often, it could have had long-term damage to the solder on the chipset.

I don't know enough about the GPU cards to warrent a guess more than above, so you'll have to ask someone who has more experience in the hardware, sorry.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I blew out the dust from the heat sinks when I was cleaning the fans, and I tried pasting twice already to make sure that the pasting was done well. I'm not exactly sure how to check the solder for the chipset, or what to even do if it was damaged.

Currently, I'm considering using MSI Afterburner to underclock the GPU Core and Memory Clock by maybe like ~50 MHz each. Furthermore, I'm about to try and lower the CPU processor power settings from 100% to like 80% (the CPU doesn't tend to get too hot, but I read a few threads about how lowering your cpu temperatures slightly could help the GPU). Also considering a laptop cooler to try and lower temperatures (currently thinking about a Cooler Master U3 or a Targus cooler - basically whatever is available at the local electronics store).

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

which software are you using to monitor temps as they can vary between software.

lots of monitoring freebies in my sig below.

 

You may want to add this as well to your tools, MrDJ ... Open Hardware Monitor - Core temp, fan speed and voltages in a free software gadget

It's a lot like HWMonitor, but seems to have lower overhead.

 

cheers mate, will add it.

 

I've been using HWMonitor mainly. However, I did also check temperatures with Speedfan and MSI Afterburner. All three programs agree on the high temperatures.

 

One of the heatpipes may be defective.

 

Do you happen to know if a defective heatpipe could cause the start up issue? I'm usually worried when I turn off my laptop at the moment because of how it'll sometimes take multiple tries to start back up. I don't want to turn it off, and just have it not be able to come back on. The screen will be completely black even though the power indicator is blue and active. So I simply wait a bit, see no boot up screen and just a black screen, hold the power button to turn it back off, and then retry the process until the screen boots up. After that, the computer works fine except for the temperature issues (at least until I turn it off and repeat the process).

 

Temps shouldn't vary much - if at all - between applications. They're all pulling the info from the same source. They're just an interface.

The start up problem could be related to this. Perhaps your GPU is on its last leg. With the temps being as high as you've mentioned, I'd keep a close eye on that card.

 

I've been rather wary of using the laptop for anything but internet browsing due to the high GPU temps, but now even watching a video seems to raise temps to about 75-80 Celsius. It wouldn't be great if the GPU was actually dying as you said, but I hope it's only the GPU. It'd suck if the GPU overheating caused damage to other parts of the computer. Something I did notice today related to the start up issue is that if the laptop falls asleep, it sometimes doesn't wake back up. The power indicator will be lit, but the screen will remain black (just like the start up issue). This means I have to power the laptop down and repower it on (and hope that it doesn't take too many tries).

I'm trying to look into prices for cards that might fit on this mobo, but it seems most cards are discontinued at this point. If anyone has any other ideas about the issue though (or any advice on how to best monitor my hardware to pinpoint the problem), I'd love for any input! And thanks to everyone who has replied so far. Really appreciate the help.

 

Does the restart issue behave the same from a cold boot as from a quick shut off and turn on?

 

As far as I am aware of, the laptop struggles to turn on whenever it sleeps or when the power is turned off and turned back on (full shut down and attempt to start the machine). However, I have not yet had it occur when I do a simple restart from the windows menu (meaning the computer doesn't actually power down).

If I understand correctly, you're asking if the problem occurs when I turn the computer off only briefly and turn it back on (compared to turning it off for a few hours and then trying to turn it on). I've had the start up problem occur regardless of the time span in between turning off the computer and attempting to turn it back on. So yes, it seems like the start up issue occurs in both scenarios. I hope I understood your question correctly; just let me know if I didn't!