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Is there any fix to m5750 overheat issues?

post #1 of 23
5/6/07 at 5:44pm
Thread Starter 
Sigh.... I just got this machine, and I love it. Best notebook I've ever had. Sadly, it overheats. I love the features on this machine, wifi switch, touchpad on/off button, mic, numberpad, dual hard drives, C2D, quiet, decent video, etc etc... But I can't use an overheat-susceptible machine.

My options that I've thought of......
Add Arctic Silver Ceramique
Get a cooling pad (I've read on here that even with cooling pad, it still overheated)
Underclock the video card (sob, nooooo!)

Other things that have crossed my mind but I don't know how to do:
Software or hardware mod that will make the fan run at full speed all the time
Undervolt CPU (do the CPU and GPU share a heatsink on this laptop? I've only had it a couple days and haven't taken anything apart)

Any suggestions?
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post #2 of 23
5/6/07 at 7:51pm
I have a 5700...I know a different maching, but still similar. I have had heat issues since day1. They were never able to help me over the phone. Mine idles at 63C with my cooler, and will stay at ~95C while playing games. Sometimes depending on the ambient it will hit the 105C alarm and then I have to shut it down.

Let us know if you find a fan mod or a way to cool it better.

-Jeff
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post #3 of 23
5/7/07 at 5:46am
You can't cool your vid card with artic silver because there is a gap between heatsink and GPU that is filled with a gap pad of about 1mm.

The only thing that is possible is to replace the gap pad with a 1mm piece of copper and AS5 on both sides. But if you don't do it right you'' short circuit your graphics card or overheat even faster and potentially with permanent damage.
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post #4 of 23
5/7/07 at 6:02pm
Thread Starter 
Excellent... So, safe to say (as though I didn't already know this) thermal pads are absolutely retarded, and no one should ever design graphics cards that use them ever again... am I right?
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post #5 of 23
5/8/07 at 3:22am
Not really. Desiging heatsink and GPU to be so close together to be cooled with AS requires tolreances much tighter, and tolerances = money.

Furthermore, such close coupling can result in mecahnical stress. Say you drop your notebook, then your heatpad stuffed notebook has a better chance of survival.

What is really retarded is the thickness of Uniwill pads. They are using standoffs that require a 1mm pad. .5 or even .25 would be more than enough and you would have a delta T of a few degrees instead of, say, 10.
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post #6 of 23
5/9/07 at 12:25pm
I can't even use my 5750 anymore - the overheating is gotten so bad that its just a big paperweight. I even built my own custom cooling system for it, which worked for a while, but even that doesn't help much now. I can't see what would fix it other than holding a gigantic icecube underneath it and blowing a giant fan. Sigh.
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post #7 of 23
5/9/07 at 4:09pm
Thread Starter 
I bet I could part this one out and still get my money back... It's pretty loaded. Awesome machine, I really like it; but that just makes the fact that it doesn't work even more irritating.
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post #8 of 23
5/10/07 at 1:03am
Thread Starter 
I have tried speedfan, and it doesn't even find any fans in the system. Therefore, I have to one of a few of these options:
locate other software
determine that speedfan is lame
have someone tell me how to configure speedfan so that it works....

Secondly, the BIOS is worthless.... There's like a TOTAL of 6 options in the whole thing.
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post #9 of 23
5/14/07 at 4:27am
Use NHC and the Amilo 3438 script. Just change the name of the notebook and you're set.
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post #10 of 23
5/15/07 at 1:26am
Thread Starter 
I tried NHC also with no luck. Where would one download this 'script' and what do I do with it? Does it import somehow?
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post #11 of 23
5/15/07 at 3:34am
Here's the script.

To be honnest, it's only been tested with the Amilo equivalent of the 5700. Not sure if it'll work with the 5750 and even if it does you'll have to modify the script (names and such).

Normally, the script is copied to the ACPI folder of NHC. I'm no programmer, if you know someone who is he might be able to help you..
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post #12 of 23
5/15/07 at 5:01pm
Thread Starter 
I put on the omega drivers and underclocked the graphics/CPU by a bit, and that did make it last a lot longer... So, this is definately the problem. I wonder if I can just sell the MXM 1800 and buy a 1600....
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post #13 of 23
5/17/07 at 10:50am
Sure. Even though it would rather be a 7600 instead of a x1800
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post #14 of 23
5/17/07 at 11:09pm
Thread Starter 
Is there anyplace to buy MXM other than that site? They're so blinking expensive... I've got the laptop apart right now to see if I can hardware mod it, as soon as I put it back together I'll try the NHC thing again. Thanks for your help in this btw.
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post #15 of 23
5/19/07 at 5:58am
Ebay or repair shops. Repair shops are more expensive and I just caught someone selling a broken card on eBay as 'brand new from the US'.
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post #16 of 23
5/19/07 at 3:23pm
Thread Starter 
Ok, now I'm really confused. I don't even know what laptop this is now... The sticker says m5700i-R2. I can't find the second hard drive plug (or anywhere a second hard drive would fit) like the m5700 and m5750 should have, and the CPU and GPU don't have thermal pads!! They're low-tolerance heatsinks with grey goo on them. I'm thinking I'll put Arctic Silver Ceramique on them, and I'll still run a voltimeter on the fan wires to see if I can just hard-wire the fan on 100% of the time... However, I am very confused. All the pics I can find of m5700s and m5750s have round power buttons and no 10-key pad. Mine has a 10-key and a long and skinny power button. If I can find out what machine this actually is, I might have better luck finding a solution as well.

I'm thinking it might be considered a 5790? But I don't know anything about that.
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post #17 of 23
7/23/07 at 1:24pm
Thread Starter 
Undervolting the CPU on these seems to be impossible. I've tried 3 utilities, 2 different versions of RMClock, ran through step-by-step tutorials, and where the tutorial says "such and such should be right here" and "check this box" the options are just greyed out and/or the such and such just isn't there.

Using ATITool I underclocked the GPU by about 20%. It runs stable with no artifacts at that clock speed. Other than gimping yourself like this, I don't know of any way to fix these things.
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post #18 of 23
7/23/07 at 1:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevineugenius View Post
Ok, now I'm really confused. I don't even know what laptop this is now... The sticker says m5700i-R2. I can't find the second hard drive plug (or anywhere a second hard drive would fit) like the m5700 and m5750 should have, and the CPU and GPU don't have thermal pads!! They're low-tolerance heatsinks with grey goo on them. I'm thinking I'll put Arctic Silver Ceramique on them, and I'll still run a voltimeter on the fan wires to see if I can just hard-wire the fan on 100% of the time... However, I am very confused. All the pics I can find of m5700s and m5750s have round power buttons and no 10-key pad. Mine has a 10-key and a long and skinny power button. If I can find out what machine this actually is, I might have better luck finding a solution as well.

I'm thinking it might be considered a 5790? But I don't know anything about that.


I looked at reviews at Notebookreview on both the 5750 and the 5790, and checked out the pictures of the stickers on the bottom of the machines, and they both say the exact same thing. I am going to assume there is very little difference between these two.
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post #19 of 23
7/23/07 at 5:36pm
It does sound like your heatpad/thermal grease interface has failed. I wouldn't run the system until you replace it with either new thermal pads or try some AS5.

I'm not familiar with the 5750/5790 setup, but the m9700 comes standard with thin heatpads, and I replaced them with AS5 with no issues. It runs much cooler now. I was able to use AS5 on the gpu's, but the memory on the gpu's have thick heatpads that made it impossible to use AS5 on the onboard memory.

If you are out of warranty, you may still be able to buy new heatpads through AW customer service if AS5 won't work.
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post #20 of 23
7/24/07 at 8:52pm
Thread Starter 
I had a guy interested in the machine so I didn't do anything to the grease. It was all still in nice little squares and I wanted him to know I hadn't dinked around with it. He did say it overheated on him about 20 minutes after I left... lol.

I had it on the fanless Thermaltake cooling pad when I ran it, so maybe that pad actually works more than I thought it did. On my software testing, I didn't notice any difference in reported temps, but apparently there was. Either the software reports it wrong, or it is RAM chips overheating and not the CPU or GPU themselves... At any rate, the TT pad is a good investment for $35, no battery drain, no noise, foldable so it fits in more places than a standard cooling pad does.

The only REAL solution I can think of... go on ebay and buy an MXM II Geforce 6600 and a 1.66 ghz processor for the lowest heat generation possible. I have found Arctic Silver Ceramique to be the best compound, I don't like OCZ though some people swear by it. Its too sticky, can't get your heatsink back off after application.
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