D901C 8800M GTX Overheating!

Hi,

I would be grateful if anyone has any stories to share on whats happening with my d901c

Around 2 weeks ago, for about 2 days, the gpu was playing up. Strange stripes and dots on the screen. Now, its completely back to normal, and has been doing fine for a few days.

However, the card overheats when I am playing any 3d games. It just shoots up to 100c according to msi afterburner, then it just shuts down.
I have a zalman notebook cooler too.

I airsprayed the whole insides of the laptop today for dust and it is still shutting down when it gets too hot playing a game.

Is there anything else I can do, such as:

1) replace the thermal compound on the gpu
2) take out the gpu and spray for dust inside
3) get a nitrogen oxide bubbler to sit underneath the gpu, to spirt bubbles of godliness into the contraption?

Any ideas will be well recieved.

N

 

My 8800m gtx fried in my old NP5793 last year and I've been seeing a lot of similar stories from others on this forum from that card dying on them. At first I was getting the same problems with lines and dots on the screen then it just went black so it was an obvious VGA problem. I bought another one but repasted with IC diamond, so you should definitely look into doing that before stressing it any further.

 

I am guessing I should buy some decent new thermal paste and take it apart/reseat the card? Everything seems fine apart from the overheating.

Could it be that the thermal paste has degraded? It has been almost 3 years since i bought the laptop.

Cheers

 

Ya that could be the case, I bought mine with some stock paste from the company but using a good paste such as IC really made a difference with the new 8800. I would say mine lasted for about 2 years before it died on me and had to replace it. Even though they probably fixed that overheating problem with newer cards I'm still switching to AMD instead of Nvidia for my next laptop lol

 

Thanks for the knowhow. Just wondering if I do have to replace the card, what should I go for?> Another 8800m gtx, a 9800 gtx, or gtx 280 (although I heard these had problems)?

Cheers

N

 

According to this site the cards your laptop can take are the 8800m gtx, 9800m gtx, and the 280m gtx with a bios update.

Clevo D901c

You can find the latest bios for your system here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/416916-clevo-bios-thread.html

For me, I just swapped out my 8800 for the same 8800 and the screen came right on without any updated or anything. You might want to update the Bios asap if your card does die on you so that you should be able to swap in any of those cards so your system would be compatible with them. I had to use the same card since I was afraid my laptop wouldn't detect a different card and the screen would stay off so I would have wasted all that money. Just play it safe and you should be good.

 

thanks a great deal.

i feel like a real idiot, bz i never knew how to turn on full fans. I thought it was fn + f1 not, fn + 1. I just been playing with full fans on and it hasnt crashed onces yet. However, it has never crashed on a game before, so it makes me think that the card is due for some new thermal paste. The only thing is, I'm not quite sure how to apply it.

My temps run at 96c for gpu while fans on.

Know any good tutorials out there for applying thermal paste to a 8800m for a d901c?

 

There are numerous videos on youtube which I followed to repaste mine. Also make sure that you are blowing out your fans because that is one mistake that I did not do even after reading about how much it helps lol, just got lazy I guess. Dusty fans spell death for your GPU if you don't keep clean air flowing in.

You can find many tutorials on youtube for how to apply thermal paste to your GPU/CPU, here's one I quickly found but I'm sure there are many good ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pgIYY_D-18

When you do it yourself though, make sure you REMOVE the battery, if you leave it in your system is prone to electric shock which could fry even more parts. An anti static strap helps but is not required.

The service manual which came with your laptop can help you figure out how to take it apart to replace certain parts.

 

thanks peeps.

I found the problem in the end. I took off the fan and between the fan and the gpu heatsink there was a lot of dust. I god rid of the dust and now it runs at 60c tops when playing games instead of 100c.

I didnt go for replacing the thermal paste, bz it seems not needed now and a much bigger job than cleaning dust. all the d901c tuts out there also dont show any thermal compound on the board, so im a bit nervous about doing it.

At least i learned a few things. remove dust and turn full fans on fn + 1

Awesome!

Cheers.