Overheating Problem

[Revon]

Hello forum members and pcspecialist dudes,

I have recently been encountering a problem with my Vortex II laptop; I've had it since January 2012 and it's never given me this (or any other) problem before.

When I play a game (e.g. Civ V, Diablo) the laptop will just overheat and turn itself off. Generally this happens after 5-10 minutes of play time. Tonight this happened on the Diablo login screen - not exactly high demand. It hasn't happened with Rome II yet, which is odd considering the high spec of this game and the length of time I have played for in the recent past (e.g. 2-3 hours at a go).

I have tried taking the back off and using an air duster to clean out the inside of the laptop; I did this only last weekend and it's still happening. Unless a whole dust ball has got sucked into my laptop while I wasn't looking, it seems unlikely that dust is the problem, although admittedly I couldn't see all the insides of the machine when I cleaned it out.

Please help!

Revon

 

[ubuysa]

What makes you think it's overheating that causing the shutdown? Have you checked the temps? If you don't have this already get hold of HWMonitor (free) from http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor/versions-history.html, it will show you your main temps. Let us know what sort of temps you see.

It might also be worth looking at the Windows event log to see whether any critical or error messages are reported in there.

 

[Revon]

Thanks for the reply ubuysa,

Tbh I was just assuming it was overheating, probably an undue assumption which is a product of my having overheating problems with previous laptops. So, yeah, I guess it may not be overheating! Haha.

The Windows event log lists these crashes as the following:

Source: Kernel-Power
Event ID: 41
Level: Critical

Atm, having just switched on the laptop, HWMonitor shows the following data:

Motherboard: CLEVO P170HMx: 58 C (136 F)
Processor: i72670-QM: highest 58 C (136 F)
Hard Drive: 37 C (98 F)
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6900M: 55 C (129 F)

Thanks for the help

 

[daveeb]

I'd post a reading taken after the graphics card has been stressed by playing e.g. Rome ii to heat the system components up.

 

[ubuysa]

The Kernel-Power event is just Windows recording that an unexpected shutdown happened and those temps are quite normal. See whether you can stress the CPU (and GPU) and see what sort of temperatures you see then.

It's always worth testing your RAM with strange problems like this. Visit http://memtest.org and download a copy of Memtest (it's free). Extract the iso file from the downloaded archive and burn the iso file to a CD. Then boot that CD and Memtest will run. Leave it running as long as possible (at least overnight) and if it reports any errors you should probably try removing all but one RAM card and run the test overnight again on each RAM card in turn to find the problem one. The longer you can leave Memtest running the better your chances of finding the flaky card (if there is one).

Also make sure you didn't disturb anything when you cleaned the dust out. Check that all plugs and connectors are properly seated. It's even worth popping the RAM cards out and reseating them if you can.

 

[Revon]

OK, so in order to stress the pc a little, I played Rome II, a pretty demanding game but one that has not caused my computer to shut itself down as yet. After 90 minutes of playing Rome II, the temperatures look like this:

Motherboard: 79 C (174 F)
CPU: 77 C (170 F)
GPU: 69 C (156 F)

Will continue with the rest of your suggestions. Cheers for the help.

 

[Revon]

ubuysa,

Thanks for your help so far. I don't have a CD or USB flash drive available atm, so it's looking like I will have to delay the memtest until I can get my hands on one.

 

[Revon]

Managed to get my hands on a CD this afternoon and ran memtest - I let it run through one complete pass, which took an hour and a half, and called it a day there - I intend to run it through the night and see what happens. As for that time, no errors were reported.

A bit more information:

It never switches off when I'm not playing a game, i.e. it's always during gameplay when it switches itself off.
It has not happened whilst playing Rome II Total War or Baldur's Gate, but it has happened whilst playing Civ V, Diablo, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2.

Thanks for the continuing help.

 

[ubuysa]

One pass of Memtest proves nothing, you really need to let it run overnight, 24 hours is even better.

 

[Revon]

OK, so currently standing at 4 passes with no errors. Can run tomorrow as well if necessary.

Are there any other possibilities aside from RAM whilst I continue to test that?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Revon]

Just a quick update - it happened once again, whilst playing Dragon Age II. After booting the PC back up, I checked HWMonitor and it has recorded max temperatures of 98 C (208 F) on my CPU(!) which seems very high to me, although I'm no computer expert so I'm not sure if that's unusual or not.

 

[jerall]

Hello - i'm having similar problems to Revon - I downloaded the HWmonitor too and I also have temps of 98deg c and my machine seems to randomly cut-out. not sure I've heard the fan cut-in for a while... could be simply that the fan is bust and it's overheating and turning itself off? also today, motherboard started beeping before it switched off.. (I don't have any 'paperwork' troubleshooting info that kind of thing...)

p.s thank you for posting this thread

 

[ubuysa]

OK, so currently standing at 4 passes with no errors. Can run tomorrow as well if necessary.

Are there any other possibilities aside from RAM whilst I continue to test that?

Thanks for the help.

It is looking unlikely that it's faulty RAM, though 4 passes isn't very many. I know it takes hours to do one pass when you have a lot of RAM but it's worth doing 10 or more passes if you can to be sure you don't have flaky RAM (which can cause all sorts of hard to localise problems).

A CPU temp of 98 deg is hot, but not dangerously hot I think. Look up the specs for your CPU, the Tmax value is the temperature at which it will shut down. It will probably be in the low 100's C.

Do you use a laptop cooling pad? If you use it on a wood or plastic surface I'd suggest you get one. It's also important that there is a good air gap all around to allow the waste heat to escape (and not get sucked back in).

Jerall has a good point about the fan, can you hear it coming on? At 98 deg C it should be at full chat and very audible.

 

[Revon]

I will continue doing more Memtests.

Max temp for my CPU (i7-2670QM) is 100 C, so given that by the time I got the laptop up and running again, it would probably have dropped a couple of degrees, would it be safe to deduct that the CPU shut the computer down after reaching the max temperature?

I have a plastic cooling stand that gives the laptop a good airflow beneath it. I also have good clearance around it, so clutter shouldn't be stifling it. The ambient temperature is fairly warm, so that might be contributing. I'm not sure about the fan - there's one fan on all the time but I can't say I've heard the second fan kick in. I'll experiment.

 

[ubuysa]

I will continue doing more Memtests.

Max temp for my CPU (i7-2670QM) is 100 C, so given that by the time I got the laptop up and running again, it would probably have dropped a couple of degrees, would it be safe to deduct that the CPU shut the computer down after reaching the max temperature?

I have a plastic cooling stand that gives the laptop a good airflow beneath it. I also have good clearance around it, so clutter shouldn't be stifling it. The ambient temperature is fairly warm, so that might be contributing. I'm not sure about the fan - there's one fan on all the time but I can't say I've heard the second fan kick in. I'll experiment.

It is possible that the laptop was shutting down at that temp (or a little higher). If you've cleaned out all the dust the CPU might need re-pasting? I would suggest you call PCS and talk it through with them, they can give you better advice on re-pasting than I can.

 

[Revon]

Cheers ubuysa, thanks for all the help! I have sent an email to PCS and am awaiting a reply. I'll give them a call tomorrow if I still haven't heard anything back. I'll post here with any updates on this situation.

 

[Revon]

First email from PCS received, advising me to remove the back panel of the laptop and clean out any dust. Have emailed back to say that I have done it. Re-cleaned it this weekend just to be sure.

 

[Revon]

Just wanted to come back and let you guys know how I got on. Eventually PCS got back to me and asked to clarify whether I had removed the fans from inside the laptop when I cleaned it out. When I confirmed that I hadn't due to not wanting to mess anything up inside the laptop, the support team said that they were happy for me to take them out myself and clean it, but I could send it in to PCS if I preferred a specialist to do it and take the diagnostics from there. I had a go at it myself and they were right - there was loads of dust all clogged up in the space between the fans and other components. My laptop has been running perfectly since then. I'd like to say thanks to you guys, particularly ubuysa, and the PCS support team for helping me find the issue and rectify it!