Just bought my new laptop the Acer 4820TG, with i5-520M + ATi Mobility 5650. What temperatures should I be worried about? I specifically bought it so I could do some low-powered gaming on the go, but playing Fuel on Steam at medium settings, 720p resolution for longer than 10 minutes gets me up to 82°C on the CPU and 80°C on the GPU. I haven't seen any evidence of overheating (video corruption, or crashes) but it's a brand new laptop and I don't want to do any damage to it! Should I be worried? I know 80°C is fine on my desktop's ATi 4870, but this is a laptop with a smaller thermal envelope and vents that easily get covered Do I void the warranty if I take the cooler off and apply some AS5 to it (and will it make a difference if I do)? Any help is much appreciated.
You could try getting a laptop cooling tray, as this may drop the temps if you get a good one. Do the fans turn up as it gets hotter?
Yes, the fan does turn up. Only when either GPU or CPU reaches >75°C does it actually go for the top-level of fan speed, which is quite loud. Is it possible the BIOS is tuned for low noise rather than low temperatures? And can I change this?
Ooooh there used to be on some older machines, but I think it may be driver level these days. Poke through all the power management software as thats where it should be Maybe Rivatuner may be able to interface with it... worth a try...
My laptop regulary hits 70*C idle. I just stick it on a solid surface and let it crank up the fan speed. Yeah, I should probably do something about it, but meh. Aren't laptops chips engineered to withstand higher temps? Or am I speaking out my ass? I wouldn't be overly concerened mate, have a look in the BIOS, I know I can adjust the speed of the HDD, so I can have performance or quiet... I have it on performance.. It's still slow. You could do what Pete said, and get a laptop cooler? Speedfan could be worth a shot as well.
One of my friends from the distant past had a Rock laptop that had a tendencie to melt its solder... and seeing at solder's min melting temp is 90 degrees it is, in theory, possible that this could happen if cheap solder is used...
if you don't move around too much just elevate your laptop and put a case fan near the rear It may not help a ton but it does help
Sorry guys, but no... these are not acceptable solutions. The GPU and CPU share the same heatsink in most laptop. Usually bigger system can have room for 2 separate heatsink, like 15inch system. You can notice this with the dual side vents. Because of the shared heatsink, it's normal that if the CPU heatsink, the northbridge and GPU will get warmer (hence explains why laptops life span is about 3-4 years on average assuming usage of everyday). The laptop should be cool all the time. My laptop temps are as follows (idle, and was on since this morning, system set to Balance): (system fan not spinning) Here are my temp using FurMark with "Xtreame Burning Mode": PLUS, Prime95: Original GPU Speed: Now I got board, so I overclocked my GPU preaty high (for a laptop): After almost 2 hours - temperature: (system fan spinning at ~4000 RPM - max speed) Normal room temp, no air cooling pads, wood desk, no elevation tricks, nothing.. just laptop on my desk in my room. The laptop feature 1 heatsink for Northbridge, CPU and GPU. It's a 14inch non-gaming laptop. Dell Latitude E6400. Specs: - Core 2 Duo P8400 - Quadro NVS 160M (equivalent: to a Geforce 9400M but with 256MB of dedicated memory instead of using system RAM.. so it's faster.. and with overclock its about a Geforce 9500M, which is much faster mobile GPU) - 4GB of RAM DDR2 800MHz - PM45 Intel chipset THAT is how a laptop is supposed to operate. Now, that this settled. I would contact Acer and have your system RMA. Your heatsink was most likely miss installed. If you can return it, I would, and order it back. If the problem still persists, then the Acer system was badly engineered. Usually very bad engineering can be visible on a laptop, by seeing if the battery is a bit warm when your system is under load. Heat destroys a lithium-ion battery (it accelerates the oxidation that is happening inside - Lithium is an unstable material.. if not pure, it will explode like the Sony batteries fireworks celebration that occurred a few years back).
I don't think 80°C is RMA worthy to be honest - but thanks hugely for that post I'll take it apart in a minute and make sure the heatsink is on right.
