GTX 675M worringly high temperatures

Hey all,

I've had my Sager NP9150 for about a year and a half now and its been great up until recently. I've noticed while playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag that my GPU temps were getting up to 97 degrees Celsius. This is completely irregular since I would normally get between 70-80 under load. I noticed that other games were running hotter than normal as well. Opened it up and reapplied the thermal paste (IC Diamond), dusted the fans and the temps dropped about 7+ degrees. Still damn hot but at least I wasn't in the danger zone anymore. Was fine all day today until night time when I noticed the Black Flag temps were up to about 96 again. Even Borderlands 2 was running around 85-88 which is not good. The drop in temps after reapplying the paste tells me that the paste really is the culprit here but I'm still not sure.

The curious thing is that my CPU was also getting VERY hot (same range like 97-100 C) I did NOT reapply the thermal paste for the CPU and the CPU temps still dropped after I reapplied paste for the GPU. Lo and behold the CPU temps were high up there again (92-95) when I noticed the GPU temps high as well. I'm wondering how they are tied together since it seems the paste didn't really have a lasting effect.

What advice do you have for me?

 

Cheers!

Did you check the fan vents? Blow some compressed air at them (from inside out) as that might be your culprit right there!

 

I did blow compressed air through them but I'll try it again more thoroughly.

 

Seconded on the fan vents, I was able to shave off 3 degrees on my 780M just by cleaning out all the dust bunnies. so do not underestimate their power. (damn rabbits...)

 

Is it necessary to remove the fan covers/heatsink? Or is it fine to just blow compressed air through them and out the back?

 

For full effect I would remove the fan, that way you can see where the dust buildup is. No need to remove the heatsink unless you want to repaste as well. One side of the heatsink will usually collect far more dust than the other side (typically the side where the airflow is greatest).

If you game a lot, then you may even want to do a weekly cleanout. When I first got my 370SM I gamed on average 20 hours a week. After a month the vents had collected more dust than my backup (non-gaming) laptop had over 2.5 years!

 

Sounds good, thanks for the tip.

 

Cleaning comes down to the environment you are in. Worth keeping an eye on in the first month to see how often you will need to clean it.

 

Sometimes things are missed, so it's a good idea to go over your paste job (look for even spread and whether too much or too little was used or not) and check that the heat sinks are tightened evenly.

 

Unlikely to be the paste job itself being wrong since its been normal for 1.5 years but non premium pastes can dry out, if your heatsink got knocked that could also have disrupted the mating of the heatsink and CPU.

 

OP said he repasted when this began cropping up. You never know.