Looking for a knowledgeable local to take a look at my laptop...

[Ambassador Spock]

Hey everyone, I've had a 17" Defiance for about four months now, and while I am generally happy with it, I do have a few concerns regarding the cooling. My main issue is how quickly the fans seem to ramp up. It seems to get very hot very quickly, even when doing what I'd consider "mild gaming". For example, right now I only have Chrome (3 tabs), a few chat programs, and two instances of Eve Online (on what we call "super potato mode" = all graphics to low, and with all 3d models disabled). Yet, my GPU is at 60 C and my CPU is pegged at 80 C... That doesn't seem right to me, as I am not doing anything crazy at all. When I open a game like Genshin Impact (not extreme at all graphics-wise) my GPU immediately jumps to 80 and the CPU stays around 95 (fans sounding like a freight train the whole time I game).

Could this be a bad thermal paste job? Or is it expected behaviour? I really don't want to send it back to PCS, because I've seen a lot of horror stories about them taking weeks to look at it, and I can't be without my laptop that long (or at all - I use it for work too). Is it my expectations that are wrong here? Is expecting to do mild gaming without so much heat+noise a fantasy?

Is there anyone who is very comfortable with knowing how to check/re-paste a laptop in the East Midlands who could take a look? I have no idea what a bad paste job even looks like, and I'm really not comfortable doing that sort of thing myself anyway.... I paid over £2,000 for a performance laptop with the assumption it would just work.... I'd be happy to meet up somewhere public and buy someone lunch if they'd take a look and help me out.

Alternatively, is there a way to limit both the fans and the temps by tweaking thermal throttling settings? I don't mind 100% fans and some heat when I am doing serious gaming, but it is getting really annoying dealing with the heat+noise for even basic stuff (I game on my couch sitting next to the wife, who has been complaining about the noise ever since I got this laptop....)

 

[Bastet]

I would first check for fluff & dust in & around the vents & inside the laptop as this can cause overheating.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Also you say you expect a laptop to just work, but from what you’re saying it’s working fine? Is there any performance impact you’re seeing?

Intel CPU’s run extremely hot, they’re a very old architecture and they will run in mid 90’s on laptops, that’s to be expected.

You can apply an undervolt to further optimise temps, but it sounds like it’s completely normal.

 

[Ambassador Spock]

Also you say you expect a laptop to just work, but from what you’re saying it’s working fine? Is there any performance impact you’re seeing?

Intel CPU’s run extremely hot, they’re a very old architecture and they will run in mid 90’s on laptops, that’s to be expected.

You can apply an undervolt to further optimise temps, but it sounds like it’s completely normal.

It works fine, yes (though I have the same issue as the Vyper 17s, where on battery the performance drops like a rock). It is just very hot and extremely loud even when doing what I consider to be low-resource gaming.

 

[SpyderTracks]

It works fine, yes (though I have the same issue as the Vyper 17s, where on battery the performance drops like a rock). It is just very hot and extremely loud even when doing what I consider to be low-resource gaming.

The performance impact when on battery is probably because you’ve got battery saver power profiles applied. That’s the default on any laptop. You’d need to manually set a performance profile if you want more power.

 

[Ambassador Spock]

The performance impact when on battery is probably because you’ve got battery saver power profiles applied. That’s the default on any laptop. You’d need to manually set a performance profile if you want more power.

It is not a power profile issue... As I did with the Vyper 17 I had before, I tried the "max performance" profile, I tried making my own profile, I even set minimum cpu usage to 100% and still had the problem. Like was confirmed over in the Vyper 17 thread, I think it is an issue with the underlying bios.

 

[SpyderTracks]

It is not a power profile issue... As I did with the Vyper 17 I had before, I tried the "max performance" profile, I tried making my own profile, I even set minimum cpu usage to 100% and still had the problem. Like was confirmed over in the Vyper 17 thread, I think it is an issue with the underlying bios.

We have had no reports of any BIOS issues on the Defiance and it's a different manufacturer anyway, it's not a BIOS issue, it's a configuration issue.

When you say the "max performance" profile, where are you seeing that, there isn't one in windows? There's "balanced" or "power saver"

 

[FerrariVie]

Hey everyone, I've had a 17" Defiance for about four months now, and while I am generally happy with it, I do have a few concerns regarding the cooling. My main issue is how quickly the fans seem to ramp up. It seems to get very hot very quickly, even when doing what I'd consider "mild gaming". For example, right now I only have Chrome (3 tabs), a few chat programs, and two instances of Eve Online (on what we call "super potato mode" = all graphics to low, and with all 3d models disabled). Yet, my GPU is at 60 C and my CPU is pegged at 80 C... That doesn't seem right to me, as I am not doing anything crazy at all. When I open a game like Genshin Impact (not extreme at all graphics-wise) my GPU immediately jumps to 80 and the CPU stays around 95 (fans sounding like a freight train the whole time I game).

Could this be a bad thermal paste job? Or is it expected behaviour? I really don't want to send it back to PCS, because I've seen a lot of horror stories about them taking weeks to look at it, and I can't be without my laptop that long (or at all - I use it for work too). Is it my expectations that are wrong here? Is expecting to do mild gaming without so much heat+noise a fantasy?

Is there anyone who is very comfortable with knowing how to check/re-paste a laptop in the East Midlands who could take a look? I have no idea what a bad paste job even looks like, and I'm really not comfortable doing that sort of thing myself anyway.... I paid over £2,000 for a performance laptop with the assumption it would just work.... I'd be happy to meet up somewhere public and buy someone lunch if they'd take a look and help me out.

Alternatively, is there a way to limit both the fans and the temps by tweaking thermal throttling settings? I don't mind 100% fans and some heat when I am doing serious gaming, but it is getting really annoying dealing with the heat+noise for even basic stuff (I game on my couch sitting next to the wife, who has been complaining about the noise ever since I got this laptop....)

Which performance profile are you using on gaming/control center? The high-perfomance should not be used for everyday tasks and the quiet/office profiles will do wonders for your temperatures and noise when just browsing and you won't notice any drops in performance. However, when gaming you're expected to change profiles to get the most out of your laptop, so there is an entertainment/gaming profile for this purpose.

In summary, high-performance profiles should only be used for benchmarking and they will very likely cause that behaviour of ramping the clocks very quickly and consequently the temperatures and noise will always be higher than normal.