Will the use of the full fan speed mode(Fn+1) damage my video card ?

Hi I am a proud owner of a np8150 (6970m, 2630qm, 4gb ram) and so far I am very satisfied with the machine. As you probably know the 6970m hits pretty high temperatures (about 90) when under heavy load for longer time. But when playing the most demanding games at the moment (crysis 2/ shogun 2) I usually overclock the video card to 775/1050 and the temperatures reach to 95-96 which is quite high in my opinion. However if I manually turn the fans to work at 100% (Fn+1) the temps never go higher than 84 which makes a huge difference. Is it possible that the use of this mode damage my video card in some way ?

 

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The OC'ing will damage the video card more. I must tell you that you have a lot more patience than I do, i can't tolerate Fn+1 for very long.

 

might shorten the life of the fans but no evidence of that actually happening exists.

 

Well that's why I overclock only when playing the most demanding games. Also I forgot to say about a strange problem with the fans - when I turn it to 100% it working at 100% and then stopping just for a moment and then working at full power again. I am pretty sure I have seen other people with np8150 with the same problem, but just in case...

 

Mine do the same thing. I've heard it is "normal".

 

My P150HM also does exactly the same thing.
Very weird.

 

Mine doesn't but I'm using a 485m

 

We have seen that issue on some of those machines with the fan being intermittent. There is an update to the EC/KCB firmware that will update the fan table and that seems to help. You might contact your reseller to see about updating that with the BIOS (sometimes it requires both - they aren't available directly on the Sager site) if you want to get a possible solution.

 

Hi Brett,

Thanks for the info
Unfortunately my BIOS and EC/KCB Firmware is already at the latest version but I'm still experiencing the problem.
Can anyone else comment?

I think I'll just live with it - it doesn't appear to be doing any harm.

 

The fan at full speed will do the opposite. It will increase the lifetime of your videocard.

The fan's lifetime will be cut short though.

 

The new bios won't get rid of it completely, but it will cut down on the "pulsing" compared to older versions. Other than not overclocking so you don't have to run FN+1 with the fans at full blast, there isn't much to be done for it. There aren't even any third party programs yet for fan control.

 

Thanks Malibal
I'm not too concerned. I just found the 'pulsing' to be a bit odd.

I've noticed in the Clevo BIOS thread that there is a new BIOS version available on the Clevo FTP. v1.14 compared to v1.12.
Does anyone know what has changed in the v1.14 version?

I think I'll stick with v1.12 at the moment as I know from previous experience that flashing BIOS can be problematic. I don't want to brick my nice new laptop. But I'm curious as to what has changed.

 

Hmm, I find that if I run Prime95 torture test then the pulsing becomes virtually non-existent. Yet when my CPU is idling then the pulsing is quite apparent. I wonder if this has something to do with Intel Speed Step or some other technology controls the fans.

 

i have same problem , but u dont need to make it maximum speed fan , fan increase the speed automatic when u are playing high graphic games

 

Yes have pulsing on P170HM3 with FN-F1, too.

After running the "TS Bench" in the Throttlestop software it pulses exactly with every refresh of the stats...

 

So I have a decision to make -
1. medium performance (no oc)+high temperatures(~90)+silent fans
2. high performance(oc)+very high temperatures(~96)+silent fans
3. high performance(oc)+medium temperatures(~85)+noisy fans
Looks like the 3rd option is the best.

 

Just be aware that as others have said, an OC will lower the overall lifespan of your card. It may not be significant, but there's no way to know in advance how it will affect it. If you're worried about shortening the lifespan of your fan/GPU, I'd stick with option 1. If you do OC though, option 3 is the safest bet for your system as temps at 96C and up are definitely going to lead to problems.

 

Thank you for the reply I know that an OC will lower the lifespan of the video card and that's why unless I am playing demanding games (in my case shogun 2) I stick with the stock frequency of my card.