P150HM Faulty Thermal Sensor

Hi guys,

Last time I bought this laptop I went through a lot forum reading and decided to get one. Now I've stumbled on a problem with the laptop and beseech the vast knowledge of NBR again.
I recently did my routine maintenance on the laptop (every 2 or 3 months) and cleaned out the heat sinks of dust etc. This time however, when I turned the laptop back on HWMonitor registered a min temp of 97 (yes celcius) and max of 99. Obviously I panicked at the start as the computer started running insanely high on the fan speed but it was only the left fan for some reason. I tried opening the laptop back up and tried some compressed air to clean it out and hopefully fix it but to no avail. I maxed the fans with Fn + 1 and turned it back down and that didn't yield anything either. Obviously the laptop wasn't actually at that high of a temp so it led me to the conclusion that it was a faulty thermal sensor that is causing this. I read up on the laptop a bit more and found that the TJMax is set at 100 degrees and oddly enough the readings never go past 99 (a 10 hour test on a few games).
This has not impeded the laptop functionally in any way but I fear it might reduce the lifespan of the laptop or I could be overlooking something. One of the forum posts said the thermal sensor reset control for a dell is FN+ Z and it didn't work for the this one for obvious reasons.

Anyone have any ideas on how this could be resolved? Thanks much in advanced.

 

was the high temps for the gpu or cpu or both?
it might be worth trying some other software to monitor to see if hw monitor is giving false readings.

try core temps for cpu and msi afterburner and hwinfo64. all can be found in my sig below.

 

Why would my fans be going up to max if it was only HW monitor giving false readings?

CPUID HWMonitor Report
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Binaries
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

HWMonitor version 1.1.8.0

Monitoring
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mainboard Model P150HMx (0x000001F3 - 0x00515A18)

LPCIO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

LPCIO Vendor NS
LPCIO Vendor ID 0xFF02
LPCIO Chip ID 0x85
LPCIO Revision ID 0x0
Config Mode I/O address 0x2E
Config Mode LDN 0x9
Config Mode registers
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
20 85 19 02 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00
30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Hardware Monitors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware monitor ACPI
Temperature 0 90°C (194°F) [0xE30] (THM0)

Hardware monitor AMD ADL
Voltage 0 1.00 Volts [0x3E8] (VIN0)
Temperature 0 57°C (134°F) [0x39] (TMPIN0)

Hardware monitor Battery


Processors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 8

APICs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0
-- Thread 1 1
-- Core 1
-- Thread 0 2
-- Thread 1 3
-- Core 2
-- Thread 0 4
-- Thread 1 5
-- Core 3
-- Thread 0 6
-- Thread 1 7

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 8)
Number of threads 8 (max 16)
Name Intel Core i7
Codename Sandy Bridge
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 988B rPGA (0x4)
CPUID 6.A.7
Extended CPUID 6.2A
Core Stepping D2
Technology 32 nm
TDP Limit 45 Watts
Core Speed 2594.1 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 26.0 x 99.8 MHz
Stock frequency 2000 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x, AVX
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4 x 256 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L3 cache 6 MBytes, 12-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes

Turbo Mode supported, enabled
Max non-turbo ratio 20x
Max turbo ratio 29x
Max efficiency ratio 8x
Max Power 60 Watts
Min Power 40 Watts
O/C bins none

 

The GPU temp seems to be normal (57 celcius) whereas the CPU temps are haywire. All the cores are reading around 89~90

 

Sounds like the PCH (platform host controller) chip is faulty, as your thread title suggests. If it gives false readings, that would certainly tell the fan controllers to rev. How long has this been happening? Any changes made recently that might have caused this?

You can try resetting the BIOS (or updating it, even, if applicable). You might also consider an EC reset: turn the laptop off, remove battery, charger, and any other peripherals. Leave it off for a few minutes, and press the power button a few times to drain the electrical charge. Then reinsert the battery and/or AC adapter and give it a whirl.

 

removing the cmos battery for a few minutes might also help

 

I'm about to try an EC reset like you said. Hopefully it works.
How would I reset the BIOS?
I just looked at the readings on HWMonitor again and I noticed that the GPU's at 58 degrees and the air flow reading is at 40degrees all in celcius of course. Only the cores are up to the high temps 80~ 97 range. And those numbers fluctuate a LOT too.
This has been happening for about a month now. I haven't had time to really figure out a way to fix it due to school coz it was still working.

EDIT: It started happening when I opened up the laptop to do my routine cleanup of the vents so I must have messed up something when that happened.

 

make absolutely SURE that that thermal sensor is the culprit, otherwise ur cpu might be in big trouble if u let it run at those temps for long. just for its sake, do a repaste and be 100% positive that the heatsink and its screws and clamped down tightly.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Try HWinfo64 instead. Display the graphs for the each core frequency, along with each core temperature, and the CPU package power. Configure to sample at low scan interval (e.g. 100ms). Observe the temperature variations vs core frequencies and package power. Also display the graphs for the Clevo EC fan RPMs while you're at it.

Can you post a snapshot showing all those graphs? That might give a good idea if temp sensors are bad or if the heat sink is not properly installed.

 

Ah, very possible. For a BIOS reset, you remove the CMOS battery (while the system is powered down, with no electricity running to it). After it has been discharged for a minute or so, remove the battery (looks like a wrist watch battery) and let it sit for a minute without. This is more effective than a soft reset of just selecting "load defaults" in the BIOS menu.

After a minute or so, reinsert the battery. Your BIOS is reset.