X205-SLI1 Owners Alert!!!!!

Anyone out there with a X205-Sli1 or Sli3 LAptop check the air intake for the cpu fan, I was wondering why my cpu temps were higher on this laptop compared to my 9349 laptop andWhile I had mine apart yesterday I noticed that someone at Toshiba had put a piece of plastic covering the air intake this was causing my cpu to idle at around 63c see attached links of the pics I took.

http://img217.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg0156ch7.jpg

http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg0155eo5.jpg

This same intake on my 9349 laptop is open, I can't see why they would want to block the air intake???

 

You probably got "lucky" and had your notebook assembled by someone who wasn't paying attention. Just be glad you caught it when you did!

 

Maybe I was lucky, anyway I just put the laptop back toghther just now and am typing this on it, Everest Ultimate now is showing cpu temp of 46c and my 2 gpu's are at 55c. Before my gpu's wpuld never go below 61c at idle , so this was the cause of my high temps!!!, I am so glad I saw this before something got damaged.

 

wierd, I just looked at mine and it's the same way, looks exactly like your's in the first pick... the GPU side is open and you can see the fan, but the CPU side is covered just like your pic. So, i can only guess that it's intentional? Wonder why they'd purposely block it? Did it look like they were trying to duct the air through the whole thing somehow? only possible idea i could see, but even that seems far fetched

 

Ok, just got off the phone with the Tech level 3 engineer I've been harassing and he connected me with a service tech, and eveybody agrees that they see no reason why it should be covered.... The one in the office that the tech guys were looking at WASNOT covered, so aparently a batch (or maybe just our two ha) got assembled with that cover left in place. Nobody's quite sure where it came from or why it's there, but according to them it should not be there. Obviously they don't recommend taking it apart yourself to fix it, but say it should definately be brought to Toshiba's attention and fixed under warranty. So, there ya have it, best I could do researching it, good find Jesse, i never even bothered to look at it.

 

Is there any new info on the other issue?

 

Bizarre, my SLi3 also has this . . . cover over the CPU side. there is still plenty of air coming out of the CPU vent and the notebook seems to be operating okay but I'll remove it and see what happens. Thanks for pointing this out.

Edit: Okay before I take the plastic thing out, CPU temp idle is 49 - 50*C (CoreTemp program) and the GPUs are at 59 - 60*C each (Nvidia nTune program).

 

Nope, according to the guy's number I got in the engineering department, the actual engineer assigned to my case has been out sick the last few days, and he didn't know any updates.... I'm pretty sure it's a dead issue though, as far as they're concerned, and honestly I'm fine with that... woulda liked an actual callback but the only real reason I pushed the issue was because of SLIGUYS comments about his talks with Toshiba and how they "made it right", but I'm convinced it's got two cards with 256 each, and that's what I was thinking when I bought it. Mostly just out of curiousity i pressed the issue, and got really no where, so not sure what he ended up with but best I can tell it's not an issue that Toshiba's concerned about, and I'm not really either. I feel I got what I paid for and what I thought I was getting is what I got.... so, don't see anything wrong with that scenario. Do really enjoy the machine, and thinks it's a great bang for the buck laptop.

Now as to this cover over the vent issue, that's something I think might actually be a problem... as, like I said, nobody at Toshiba knew why it should be there, even after pulling up parts diagrams and whatnot.

 

My SLI1 has plastic on vent also, whats with these board keys the first day they showed heavy wear marks? My HP didnt show wear until about 1.5 yrs of heavy use. Anyone know if the speaker cover is easy to remove it seems the speakers will get dirty very fast?

 

well i have been lurking this site for a few weeks and just bought an x205-sli1 4 hours ago based on the many postive reviews i have seen. i am doing as much research as i can before i delve into the clean install as i have no experience with vista or sli and came across this. siiiiiiiiigh.....

i am actually a fan of toshiba laptops and the first personal laptop that i have owned outside of comany issued laptops was a satellite 5105-s501 one of the first true multimedia laptops toshiba made. it has lasted me five years and i am typing on it now. it was just time to upgrade.

i am not a newbie in computer building as i have been building systems since windows 98 before there was even widespread usb support. but i don't feel like cracking open a brand new laptop to remove the tape on a vent that obviously isn't supposed to be there.

i want to keep the laptop but i know that there is obviously a bad batch of laptop vents with the tape on them and if i exchange it it will obviously be the same situation.

the joys of mass produced technology.......

 

Wow, the amount of time and the complexity of getting to the CPU is extensive, I won't be attempting this with a machine that's not mine. The plastic piece is not affecting the thermal performance of this notebook significantly . . . there seems to be plenty of air coming out the CPU side. Now if the plastic vent were blocking the GPU vent then yes I can see how there could be more problems.

To anyone who's interested in this notebook or already has one, I would not worry about it.

 

yeah, just took a peak at mine as well.... def not a quick and easy job. Looks like a complete disassembly, not for the faint of heart. I've been running mine fairly hard with overclocked gpu's and just like chaz said, haven't had any problems. Hottest i've seen them get is in the mid 70's with a decent overclock playing Crysis for a while. Guess if i'm every in there swapping out the CPU I'll remove it or have to send it to Toshiba for work I'll mention it to them, but don't see it as a good enough reason to tear apart a perfectly working laptop.

 

maybe i will take it a local toshiba tech center when i go out of town in a couple of weeks.

 

Yeah I really wouldn't attempt this because temperatures are fine with it in place.

On the plus side this means less dust in the system.

 

HA, good enough for me... I'll just pretend it's like my airplane where I have to cover half the oil cooler vents in winter to help it actually reach operating temperature

 

my sli3 has this covered also, and my gpu temps are around 58/61. So are we 100% sure this cover should be removed??????

 

I just returned from my local Fry's Electronics and their demo unit has the opening covered as well, now who in their right mind would cover that air vent up and cause the area to have no air flow for the cpu at all. Someone at Toshiba or Foxconn screwed up royally on this one. I can definetely feel more air flowing in that area and my temps dropped by 10c on the cpu and 7c on both gpu's so I am not putting that back on as I see that it helps move the hot air from the laptop a lot better.

 

Alright, so I finally found a way to get rid of this plastic piece without disassembling the entire notebook. I took the RAM compartment door off to start. If you look towards the vent you'll see some sort of gray thing. I didn't think it was doing anything just sitting there so I took that out, then poked the plastic piece down with a bent paperclip. Then through a series of twisting and pulling with the tweezers, which I had to insert into the fan compartment, I managed to get the plastic piece out of there.
I do NOT take any responsibility whatsoever should you try this method with your notebook, it is at your OWN RISK.

After removing that piece my CPU temps are around 46-47*C, so a 3-4*C loss , and the GPU temps are the same. So, it's not worth the effort. I'm thinking that the notebook's fans were running faster with the plastic piece to keep temps at a certain level; now they're running slower but maintaining the same temperatures. Just a theory.

Edit: GPU load temps using the Nvidia nTune stability test (not a great test, I know), are 62 - 65*C, which is beautifully low. I don't know what it was beforehand. CPU load temps are no higher than 60-61*C stressing one core. Can anyone who has an SLi X205 with the plastic cover on try some benchmarks and see what your load temps are?

 

Interesting, so Toshiba is reporting that it shouldn't be covered, and the one they had for reference wasn't covered, yet it seems everyone who has posted after post 2673445 has reported that the system he/she has is also covered. With that many covered it is either a huge oversite, or it was covered intentionally (and the person/people be77solo communicated with were not informed why).

 

That almost sounds as complicated as taking apart the whole notebook.

If the fans run slower then it is also possible it is drawing less power to cool the notebook, and in turn the battery life might be slightly different.

 

Hey Chaz, shoot me a private message with what you want me to test and I'll do it when I get back later, as I still have mine covered, would be VERY curious to see the difference

 

Guess they sent all the correct ones to Costco, ;>)
Just checked my vents and no plactic cover. Temps have
always been good even the hard dvrives only 38 and 39

 

No plastic cover on mine. Weird.

 

Now that I took that plastic off, my cpu is always around 46c on both cores when idle or when surfing the web like right now, my hard drives are 31c and 33c right now.

 

Iam lazy so I removed the memory cover, one screw holds it on its the cover next to cpu vent I then pushed the plastic inward with a swiss army knife blade its thin, after it became loose i used tweesers to remove it, takes some patience. I installed latest Nvidia drivers and 3Dmark03 score went up to 21099 from 20062 and the intro to Bioshock runs normal now, before the middle of screen only displayed video at the intro only. When I first installed Bioshock it did ask to update drivers. Just bought Crysis at BestBuy today its out!!!! Will istall it tonight. by the way 21099 3DMark03 my machine ran is rated #1 for a 2.0 g 8600GT based machine. Thats for postings for this setup . out of 3,500,000 + postings only 72,000+ - are better and this includes desktops, thats pretty darn good! i still have not cleaned stock bloatware.

 

Just to weigh in on this issue, mine has the plastic sheet covering the CPU vent as well. I bought mine from Amazon about 3 weeks ago.

So what's the consensus on this? Leave it in place or take it off?

 

Ok, just sent over my stuff to Chaz per his instructions, but gotta head out for the afternoon... nothing got over 65C though, and CPU is idling around 46-48C with the cover still in place... will post better numbers later on... but, doesn't seem to be too much of an issue to worry about

 

Well you can install coretemp or everest ultimate and see what your cpu temps are and I would say if they are in the low to mid 40's I would say leave it on, but on mine when I installed everest ultimate and it showed 63c for both cpu cores I knew something was wrong and that is when I started looking for the cause and I noticed the plastic, now my cpu is always around 43 to 48c depending what I am doing (this is when not playing any games).

 

Thanks Jesse. Just installed it. Great software....but I'm looking at my graphics card data on Everest and it's saying 256MB total. Why isn't it showing the 512MB as Toshiba claims I have on the SLI-1? Sorry if this is this the same question that's been asked earlier but seeing it confirmed with Everest is bugging me out.

 

Everest only see's one of the 2 video cards, because when you are running windows it only uses one of the 2 cards and is why it only see's 256MB of memory, the 2 cards are only used when you play sli capable 3d games. It's confusing and Toshiba should have put that information differently in their documentation.

 

I completely agree. The last thing I want is to have to return this puppy or deal with any other issues because what's inside isn't what Toshiba marketed it to have.

The thing that I keep mentioning but nobody is addressing here is that when you go to nVidia's website and you run their SLI scan, it also shows up that we don't have SLI on these things. Still scratching my head on that.:confused2: :confused2:

 

When you have SLI it doesnt "double" your video ram, your still stuck with the same amount of RAM you have in one card. Instead lf 512mb of video ram your going to have 256mb vram in your SLI-1 because the cards themselves are 256mb.

 

We figured out that there is basically no difference whether the cover is on or off as far as temperatures go, with the same ambient room temperature and running the same apps. So, if you have this on - don't worry about removing it. You can remove it if you want but it really makes no difference.

The SLi X205 has SLI, don't worry about that.

First install the 169.09 drivers:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187742
Then download Nvidia nTune and install it:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.47.00.html
Then launch the Nvidia monitor, and when it comes up, hit the little arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the window to expand the monitor; it will show you the temperatures of both your GPUs.

 

SLI1 owner who totally appreciates everyone's efforts and input. Thank you!!

 

Hey Jesse, didn't you upgrade your CPU to a 7700 though? Don't those run hotter anyway? Was reading a couple articles on them, and both commented on extra heat versus the slower models.... maybe that's part of where your extra heat is coming from, versus my 7250?

 

I have the T7500 in my system (SLi3) and the temps were not significantly higher than your T7250's, be77solo.

 

No that is not it, I just remembered that I swapped the motherboard with the one on my 9349 to see if sli would still work on the sli1 and to see if the 1gig of turbo cache would help the sli1 be faster (it really has not!! ). I checked earlier and the fans on the sli1 are 5v .5amp and the 9349 fans are 5v 1.5amp. I just finished swapping the fan for the cpu from one laptop to the other so the fans are the right ones, even though physically the fans are identical, anyway that is my theory of what caused my problem. That's what I get for messing around with my new laptops he he he!! , but right now I still ave the motherboard from the 9349 and the right fans and my temps are 46c idle for the cpu and 55c idle for the gpu's and they do not go above 66c under load at all.

 

Ha, I hear ya man! I give ya props for a total tear down and Motherboard swap on a week old laptop! So you're running the 9349 motherboard with the SLI graphic cards? What's the difference, that lack of turbo cache? That it?

As a side note, those temps sound right there with mine, as it sits with the cover still on. Will probably pull it out next time I have the ram door open, but good to hear that the 7700 doesn't run noticeably any hotter

 

I don't really see any difference with having the intel robson turbo cache at all, I decided to swap the motherboards for 3 reasons
1) To see if the 9349 laptop would work with the sli video cards cards, it does work!!.
2) To see if the intel robson turbo cache would make the sli laptops any faster, which it really does not.
3) My son wanted to run XP to play a lot of his games that don't run in Vista and without the turbo cache there, I won't have to worry about seeing the exclamation mark in the device manager since XP does not support turbo cache.

So we are both happy campers, yesterday I bought a OEM copy of Vista Ultimate at my local PC Club for my laptop and is what I am currently running right now.

 

Update: Just for laughs I put some packing tape to block the cpu vent after having to original fan that came in the laptop (after swapping it with the 9349 laptop) and instantly my temps jumped from 46c idle to 55c idle and they are staying there I am watching them right now as I type this message so on my laptop the vent being blocked does make a difference, I better take that tape off as I don't want the temps to go higher, the tape is off now and the temps are dropping already, so the vent is staying open on my laptop.

 

is there a fan under the blocked cover, or just an opening??? It seems like if there is no fan, then opening it would prevent air from being pushed out through the left side of the computers' heat sinks (by the vga out).

I haven't opened my machine up, so I don't know which side is graphics, and which side is processor.

 

Yes there is a fan just under the covered vent opening for the cpu.

 

OK, so i decided to try and remove the cover over the vent, even though it wasn't running very hot at all.... Got it out, fired up Crysis to test it out under load, and have run into a problem.... while my CPU is running maybe a couple degrees cooler, my GPU's are running SIGNIFICANTLY hotter! I just checked after playing for about half an hour, and my CPU was still around 60-65C, but the GPU1 was at 92C!!!! Up to this point I haven't seen anything hotter than 78C! So, backed the overclock I've been running down back to stock, let em cool down at idle, and played again, and within a few minutes it was back up to 87! Not sure how it made that much of a difference, but that's not good! Like I said, under any overclock or game or test before, the GPU's never got to 80C, and now with stock clock speeds are approaching 90C... wierd, I can only assume it's there for maybe some ducting of air through the laptop? I don't know? I figured things would only run cooler, but was SHOCKED when I checked the temps. Granted, Crysis is pushing the GPU's to their max, but still even last night while playing for a coupld hours with a good overclock, they never got near that hot.

Thoughts? Maybe since you're running a different motherboard Jesse that's why your's may cool differently? Looking at the piece of plastic that I removed, it sure looks like it was intention for some reason, more than a simple piece of tape or something left on there.... odd I say

 

That's bizarre. I have the cover removed and I haven't noticed any difference in GPU temps. I just did a run-through of 3DMark06 and my GPU temps did not top 76*C.

Sounds like your fan isn't turning on at all. Are you sure it's running?

Note that Crysis only stresses one of your GPUs by the way, it is not SLI compliant yet.

 

yeah, really wierd, they're both turning, whirling away, and i can feel the airflow... just checked again and right around 83C for the GPU1 (you're right, GPU2 is showing 64C....side note, why do i get the SLI indicator bar on the screen if it's only running one GPU?, off topic I know) I have no idea why it's running so much hotter, but like you said, I never got over mid 70's before, and now in 5 minutes of playing I'm in the mid 80's at stock clock speeds.

 

I noticed my mouse hand was getting noticeably hotter as well sittin on the right side, that was my first clue

 

be77solo - You know they blocked that vent to use the cpu fan to help cool down the gpu's by pulling the hot air out insted of pulling in cool air for the cpu from outside the laptop. That is the only conclusion that I can come up with, but why didn't they just use a fan with higher rpm fan for the gpu's rather than using the cpu fan to help cool the gpu's (it's just to save money, I know!!!!) damm companies trying to find any way to cut manufacturing costs. With the vent open the highest I have seen the gpu's on mine go to is 78c after playing GOW for about an hour.

 

Another thing to note is that the secong gpu has a thin piece of metal as a heatsink, where the first gpu has a thick aluminum heatsink I noticed this when I took my laptop apart and seperated the card to put Arctic Silver on both gpu's.
I have pics on my camera memory card if you guys would like see them I can post them later this afternoon.

 

Yeah, gonna have to cover it back up I guess... The cpu's never really got very hot before, so I guess it works well enough, shoulda left it alone ha.. So, I would recommend anybody that has the cover on, LEAVE IT THERE! Gonna tape mine back up or something I guess, hopefully that'll take care of it. Amazed how much hotter and how fast they get so hot though, that suprised me. I'll report back later if that gets them back down to where they were after work today, but in quick tests yesterday they were getting into the upper 80'sC in about 5 minutes of playing Crysis at stock clock speeds, where as before I was never in the 80's EVER even with overclocking to 600/1300/900 and playing for a an hour or so. Wierd

BUT, guess thats part of it too, ya win some, ya lose some