Really odd thermals

Laptop has been running hot lately, (not really what this is about) and I noticed something the tonight. I had 5 clients open in EVE and was watching my thermals like I usually do to make sure it doesn't get too hot. My dog chased the cat behind the chair and unplugged my laptop. I got up to get a drink and came back and say my thermals were down from 75C to about 45c while running on battery power. I plugged it back in and they slowly started to climb again to around 75C. So I unplugged it and they dropped again. I noticed no performance drop in the clients while running on battery power so im wondering what the hell its doing and how to keep doing it. I tried removing the battery and playing with it just plugged in thinking perhaps the heat was coming from charging the battery but that made no difference so im at a complete loss. If anyone has any ideas im all ears. P.S. both while plugged in and on battery I had it set to high performance.

 

Computer reference and specs ?

did you repaste / clean your heatsinks ?

 

Component usually throttle on battery to prevent damaging it (you don't want to pull 200w from battery), but it should impact performance.

 

Yeah. I can say that it probably downclocked your CPU or whatever when on battery, but the lack of performance drop is surprising.

 

You should try repeating this but with some benchmark running that is constantly showing FPS and see if you notice a drop in them.

 

Eve in most cases will look ok all the way to 20-30fps so it might just have been hard to tell.

 

Its a np 8258 i7 8gb ram evo 840 ssd gtx 870. Yes I have cleaned vents, but I didn't repaste yet. So there may be some throttling, but I don't see it in my game. So my questions is can I manually throttle it when its needed as its not doing itself for some reason and causing some heat issues.

 

What do you consider too hot for the GPU?

Having heavy games stress the GPU in the 80's isn't uncommon for the 870/880.

Borderland 2 for example for me averages 76-82 depending on the area and how much its rendering at a given time.
Skyrim runs amazingly cool all considering and generally sits around 68-74.

For most games it'll run high 60's and low to mid 70's. It just doesn't run as cool as the 900 series but it's still well within thermal limits.

Only worry when it's consistently in the upper 80's or in the 90's.

 

That GPU will throttle at 91C FYI.

 

Yup!

I even hit that once. Playing Borderland2 with the first drivers for the 800 series, in 28c ambient temperature.

Took about 6 hours to get there, in the desert, with multiple vehicles in combat, but I got there

In my normal 22/23c ambient, I never get past the 80's.

 

O_O. That's the 880M at work haha. In 34 degrees ambient with max fans without propping my machine up, I don't cross about 72 degrees or so in Borderlands 2.

 

Ya it gets to mid 80's , and I don't want to run it for long periods of time at those temps. Side note not sure if my fan ever cycles up to high enough speed on its own. If I turn the fan on max it goes to a higher rpm than it ever does on its own, and in some testing today I noticed my gpu will throttle rather than my fan going to maximum speed.

 

Oh, well you see I didn't have the fans on max

I'd have likely gone down to 84c in that case (which for the 800 series ain't bad)