NP8690 How to access video card

Hi all,

I'm pretty bad and inefficient on computers but I try solving things on my own, sometimes taking 10x more time than others. If anyone could please advise me on this it would be appreciated. You can skip the below text and go directly to the bold to see my question ><

I've been trying to find the solution to my problem over the forums and everywhere but couldn't find a simple answer =(
I bought my Sager NP8690 (i720, gtx 280m) roughly around two years ago, and since last year I've been having the "display driver stopped responding and has recovered" problem. Funny thing was, it only happened if I had some of the known conditions: 1) Opening two internet explorers (seperate pages, not tabs) at the same time. 2) Play Ragnarok (yes, the 10 year old game), or 3) Running any low-end graphic game. It sometimes happened on random, and ignoring it would make it go away for a few hours to days, or sometimes it will simply stay there. However I could play high-end games with the highest graphics with no problem - League of legends, dota 2, skyrim, aion, etc. I tried things such as updating graphics drivers, cleaning fans/heatsinks, changing power performances on gpu (through nvidia 3d setting and power management), etc but none worked. So this summer I decided to re install my computer system, clean out my fans, and left it super clean. Now it's much faster, and I don't have the problem with the "display driver stopped responding" problem...for low-end games. Ragnarok, internet explorer, no problems. However, I just bought guild wars 2 yesterday, and even with the lowest settings, it would crash my driver every few seconds, and at the 3rd crash (where the screen would black out for few seconds), it would lag and shut the game down, or rarely just stuck there for 3min and then refresh again. I tried ALOT of things and none worked (I know its not game-specific, it also happens on dota 2)

I heard from some people it may be because the video card has dust in it. I know my GPU did not overheat, as the crash can happen at the beginning of character select, where the temperature is about ~50 when I checked. Also through very high benchmark tests (also tried Furmark) my GPU doesn't really ever go past 90 degrees so I know it isn't a heatsink problem. So I decided to open the computer and check out the video card. Problem was, I checked all over the internet (including user manuals) and it only taught how to open everything BUT the video card heatsink. Could anyone please post how to open it up, preferably with pictures/video. I know the CPU heatsink is on the right, which I can open up easily and access the CPU. However, after unscrewing the left side fan & heatsink, it would not even budge if I tried yanking it up down left or right. Afraid to damage anything, I closed it back up and gave up.
Is the video card even accessible to clean? Is it even replacable? If cleaning it still gives me the problem, I might just buy a new 280m and replace it myself, if its even possible.

Thanks again and sorry for posting a lot. I'm a pretty noob game lover and would really appreciate the help ><!
Mike

 

You should watch from 4:00

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Thank you so much for the video. And I just figured why I can't remove my heat sink - it's totally locked down, with metal bars pinning it down, impossible to remove. Does anyone know the reason of this? Mines a customized one from xoticpc a few months after it came out. I don't have warranty anymore, so I can't send it in to 'unlock' the heatsink. Anyone know what I can do for it?

Here's a photo of it:
View attachment 85112

As you can see there are 2 mini bars on the bottom, and one on the left/right pinning the heatsink down to the video card.

Thanks for the help! I appreciate it.

 

You could post some pictures so people know what you mean. It seems odd to lock down the heatsinks.

 

Sorry I just edited the post and put the picture on my previous post =x Thanks!

View attachment 85113

 

I see what you mean. Is it possible to bend them back away from the heatsink? It looks like that is how they were fitted in the first place.

 

I tried with extreme precaution trying to jiggle left and right but it did not even budge - I could lift the whole computer up with the sticker. I know what you meant, but it actually isn't bended, it's like a cliff that the bars just hang out of the heatsink circumference. If you look really closely to the right and bottom bars, you can see they are actually pinned down with little curved craters, and it seems that there's a kind of glue under all the bars.

Is there a way to ask sager themselves why they did that? On their support site, I could only request an RMA which I don't want. Just want them to send an email and ask them.

 

It looks to me like you have extra copper bits added to the heatsink itself, and aluminum tabs folded over. On the left side the tab is wrinkled which would suggest it was bent over the heatsink. If the aluminum tabs were bent back, it should free it up. Of course it is hard to tell from the picture. Might be worth emailing Sager.

 

Thanks alot for helping me out. I appreciate the time you spent on this ^^

Anyways, in the end I just downloaded MSI Afterburner, and funny thing is I just under-clocked the core speed by 1, and it worked miraculously. If I put it at the same value, or any higher, the video card would reset immediately if I went in the game. But just by under-clocking it by 1 gave me no more problems.....very weird?

 

Thats just metal tape over the copper. You can just peel it off, I'm sure its not doing much of anything.

 

The heatsink shouldnt be locked down in anyway. The first time I took off mine it took some extra effort because the thermal compound was working kinda like an adhesive. If you remove all the screws holding it down you should be able to remove it just like the CPU one. Just pull a little more.