P150EM (i7 3632QM + GTX 970M) turning GPU off in intensive games

Hello there.

I bought a P150EM on Christmas of 2012 in Brazil, manufactured by a brand that doesn't even exist anymore (Powernote). It had a i7 3610QM and a Radeon HD7970M. Its GPU broke in middle of 2013 and since then, I wasn't using the laptop (or using sporadically with GPU deactivated in Windows, since just the fact of installing the drivers was causing BSOD).

This month I finally realize that was just a waste not using this laptop, since it has a MXM slot for GPU and I found a GTX 970M for $162. So I bought a piece and changed the processor for a low power one (the one in the title).

And it works... kinda. If I try to play some intensive games without v-sync activated (aka using all the power of 970M), the game crashes after some minutes and laptop starts to do the same beep that it does when you don't have a GPU installed, forcing me to restart. After that, the GPU is still detected, but I can't launch any games until reinstalling the drivers. If I try to play less intensive games, it plays fine for hours. I was using Afterburner to test temperatures and the maximum I reached with GPU was 84 degrees celsius, so I don't think is getting too hot or something.

I have a feeling about the problem that I just want to confirm here: I don't have the original PSU for it, because Powernote sent to me a generic PSU with 150W capacity. After a basic research, I could confirm this is a little less than it supposed to be (180W). If it helps, I have the last bios from Prema (1.02.07PM v2, I think?) and I installed his OC v2 vBios.

So, I have 3 questions:

-Is it actually a PSU problem or my GPU is defective?
-If I flash the stock vBios, would it help in anything?
-Is 180W enough to cut it? I bought this PSU, but I still have to wait until it comes. It's supposed to arrive in the beginning of next year, sadly.

Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas, everybody.

 

I'm thinking the heatsink is not installed correctly and the power deliver region of the card is overheating. If you previously were using a 7970m then you will not have the correct thermal pads for an Nvidia card.

Depending on the 970m version there are either 2 or 4 black 5x6mm chips on the front side at the very top of the card. You must have 1.5mm thick thermal pads on these chips. Your card's behavior exactly matches what happens if these are not cooled.

 

You are right, I still have old thermal pads from 7970M. I even have to remove 2 on top because they were too t h i c c for 970M.

I have this card here. So, you mean those chips?

 

Yes those chips need to be cooled. They need 1.5mm thermal pads.

The 2 similar looking chips at the right edge, which are visible at the top of your image should also be cooled with 1.5mm thick pads as well.

Nvidia cards come with thermal pads on the big grey R22 and R56 labeled inductors as well, but cooling these is not necessary. Your 7970m pads should be reusable on these. If you no longer have these pads, if I remember correctly they should be 1mm thick.

You can order thermal pads from many websites online. Avoid thermal pads that say they are high performance. These tend to be very hard while you need squishy pads, especially if you want to also have pads for the inductors (again it's not necessary to cool the inductors).

Also the card shutting down means temperatures of about 150C are being detected. The emergency thermal protection shutdown isn't 100% reliable. I recommend avoiding anything demanding at all on the card until you get the pads.

 

Thank you very much! I'll try to find some thermal pads when I get in home. I believe I have some stored somewhere, but if I don't, I'll order online and I'll post here after some tests.

 

Even if you have thinner ones you can stack them.

 

Just use K5 Pro. No need to worry about thermal pad thicknesses.

 

For a 1.5mm gap?

 

Can be used for gaps up to 3mm according to the manufacturer.

 

So, since it's Christmas and I won't have anything before the end of holidays, I just tried to use the old GPU thermal pads. I'm pretty sure this is a terrible idea, since they are not well shaped (I needed to put "little pieces" to fulfill gaps, lol) and they are, for sure, in wrong height.

Good news is: it kinda works. I didn't test for much time because I don't know if that's acceptable (probably not), but the game didn't crash in 20 minutes. It was a lot faster before.
Bad news: I'm reaching 92°C in 10 minutes. It's winter here, so it's pretty cold. Playing with those conditions in summer will be unbearable.

I don't know if I just put too much thermal paste (I'm using an Arctic MX-4) or if heatsink is just not shaped for 970M (the copper part is shaped as a losangle - the shape of 7970M die - instead of a square). It has nothing to do with it or do I need a new GPU heatsink? For comparison, my CPU is not even reaching 60 degrees.

Ah, thanks for the K5 Pro tip. I'll probably buy one since it will arrive before any thermal pad that I could find on ebay.

 

A 970m should run very cool. Your existing heatsink is fine. There must be a die contact or air flow issue. Make sure the gpu radiators are clean of dust.

 

You can post up a picture of the thermal paste after you separate them, it gives a guide on contact.

 

It was a die contact issue. The screws for 7970M didn't work for GTX 970M, so I needed to find other ones. Initially I've used some from the fans, but they're too small and they are not helping with the pressure. I've found some screws here that did the job better and I didn't reach more than 80°C playing for 20 minutes.

I decided to go for simple thermal pads instead of K5 Pro. It is my first time doing it, so I just don't want to mess everything up. Meaker said I could stack pads to increase height, so I bought a 200x200mm x 0.5mm kit on Amazon ( this one) and this is exactly what I'm going to do. They are probably going to arrive tomorrow in afternoon.

I just have two more questions:

-Is there any place that I could buy those screws for a reasonable price (like less than $10)?
-I found the "schematics" for using thermal pads in GTX 970M:


What I don't understand yet is about this part here:



Do I need to put the pads on those chips or above them? Or both? Heck, first of all, are those placements and heights right?

Thanks again.

 

Those are all capacitors and a good idea if you can.

 

That figure has several errors.

There is absolutely no reason to add pads to the capacitors. They do not warm up at all. You had 1mm pads on the MOSFETs. This results in very loose contact, while these are the most important components to cool after the core. Soft 1.5mm pads work much better.

I starred the inductor pads because these are not necessary, but are good to have. If you are doing a hodgepodge of pads and whatever you are using for inductor pads results in poor pressure for the MOSFET pads, then exclude the inductor pads. If you have the sizes I listed in the image though then pads should all contact fine unless you card is substantially warped.

 

Capacitors do dissipate some heat and having them sit under a hot plate with no airflow is going to run them hotter and running hotter will shorten their life span.

 

So, I decided to put only 0.5mm on inductors, only 1mm on capacitors and follow the rest as Khenglish said.

I can't confirm so soon, but I could play Metro Last Light with V-sync off for an hour!



If I have some problems, I'll add some pads on inductor/capacitors, but seems like everything is good. Thank you all so much for your help!

I just need a set of screws for reaching the right pressure on GPU with heatsinks and I'll be set. Temperatures are ok for following months, at least

 

That looks better

 

Also have you looked at the heatsink itself? If I remember correctly the heatsink from the AMD card is different from the heatsink of the nvidia cards of that generation, which could add to the contact issues you have.

I have a set I think if you need me to check.

 

Heatsink seems fine, it's making contact and gpu is not turning off or with crazy high temperatures after minutes. Seems like screws are the issue, AMD ones are just too small.

I have no idea how to even search for those screws, I know Eurocom sells them, but I have to pay like $7 for the screws and $49 for shipping so... nope, lol.

If you know any place that actually sells them for less than $20 with taxes+shipping, I'm interested.

 

It's not Nvidia vs AMD screws its Clevo/MSI vs Dell. Clevo and MSI use very narrow specialized screws while Dell uses a slightly larger more standard size that you can often find matches that of other random electronics with narrow looking screws. Clevo moved to the larger size for 10 and 20 series.

It sounds like you bought a Dell/Alienware 970m, which needs the slightly larger screws for the x-bracket. You can likely harvest the correct size from newer spare electronics with narrow screws. Ex your laptop's 4 lcd panel screws and 5 keyboard screws match that of the dell x-bracket. For now until you find more screws taking 4 of the keyboard screws should work well.

Don't try changing the x-bracket. This is hard on the card and you can easily damage it.

 

Exactly. I've used some random screws I have here. It's not perfect, but it's doing the job. I think 2 of them are from the keyboard.

And on different topic, you talked about using P4000 on P150EM. Did you test it? I'm really interested to buy that instead of a 1060/1070, but it's complicated to invest $200 on something that you can't guarantee that is going to work.

 

The P4000 works without any mods other than a driver .inf mod. Performance is between that of a 1060 and 1070, closer to a 1060 when overclocking is considered since the P4000 cannot be overclocked.

 

That's really good to know. I'm thinking about getting it on that ebay seller you linked when you talked about it. Do you mind if I send to you a PM when it gets here if I have some problems with driver modification? I did that on my 970M, so I'm not a complete noob on that matter

Thanks again.

 

Yup feel free to PM me.

 

Can you modify the clock curve at all?

 

Nope, that’s locked out on Quadros as well.

 

That's a shame you can't even undervolt.