FwuffyMouse Posted July 16, 2014 Posted July 16, 2014 As the title says, I've been running with a Dell laptop for a little over 2 years now, and since I was the first in my family to get one, Noone would have known that Dell makes shitty laptops. The first one I had before I replaced this one had a hard drive failure after 2 weeks, LOL. The system Is an inspiron N5110 15 inch laptop with a secondary NVidia GeForce GT 525m graphics card alongside the integrated one. For whatever reason, The laptop can stay under load (skyrim on low) for around 15-20 minutes before shutting itself down. I have tried bios updates, driver updates, cleaning the fan,cleaning the heatsink , setting the cpu and gpu to draw less power in the control panel, and replacing the thermal paste. Despite all of this, nothing has changed. Is it possible the sensors detecting the heat are damaged or flawed and reporting higher temperatures than they should? If so, would it be safe to change the shutdown threshold in the BIOS? would It be safe to do so? Also, would I be able to save my hard drive from the laptop and keep the data on it? or transfer it all to a new system, as far as all my documents goes anyway. I know that I will have to re-install all of my programs if I get a new pc. And finally, What's a good low to mid range desktop PC that I can get myself as an upgrade? I don't care for a hard-core gaming rig, just one that will run new things that come out in the next year or so on at least low settings. I Lack the skills to build my own computer from parts or I would have done it already. BTW, It's not under warranty anymore, so I'm on my own.
ds64 Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 I have that problem too, I'm using Acer Aspire 4750G since 2011, but my problem is gone after I cleaned the fan a few days ago. Are you already cleaned inside the fan? I need to open the fan to clean it, and damn... those dust is nasty as shit.. Btw, when your laptop shut down, did it smell something burn? If that so, then your laptop probably overheating just like mine. I think you can move your data to the USB flash drive or external HDD, or maybe put your laptop HDD to your Desktop PC.
FwuffyMouse Posted July 17, 2014 Author Posted July 17, 2014 It's clean as can be, And after all I'd done trying to keep it cool, I'm afraid that there's actually an issue with hardware that I can't fix.
Justoutthere Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Was having serious overheating issues with my desktop a short while ago. This http://openhardwaremonitor.org/ helped identify exactly what was overheating and where I needed to focus my efforts. At the very least it will confirm your suspisions regarding how effective your cleaning was. Given your setup I would be inclined to look at the graphics card as a heat source as airflow in laptops is notoriously bad.
Guest Mogie56 Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 you said you replaced the thermal paste? very very thin layer? what sort of cooling does the secondary vid card have? do you by chance have a cooler for under the laptop? I'm not familiar with laptop secondary vid cards, does it have a cooling fan/heatsync? if so you may want to replace the thermal paste on it as well. I do on my PC vid-card just because mfg. don't always do a good job of putting it on in the first place. and they build up dust rather quickly.
Guest carywinton Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Laptops with integrated and add on video cards share the same closed cooling system as the CPU, they are connected by a long heat sink to the fan assembly, Some have a closed liquid cooling system, most made in the last 5 years have this kind of cooling. An under the bottom secondary fan and base which usually runs off a USB port is always a good move for a laptop. These help reduce the poor heat dissipation quite well. You should be able to feel the bottom of the laptop near where the fan is blowing air out to easily determine if the CPU and GPU are overheating, if it is nearly too hot too keep your hand on, then you need an external cooling fan base. There are several inexpensive SATA -PATA to USB devices that will hook up to your hard drive and allow you to use it and save your data. I use several different types here and it makes backing up customer data a whole lot easier, I hardly ever even have to remove the drive from desktops at all, but always have to remove the drive on laptops due to the way they connect up to the motherboard controller.
FwuffyMouse Posted July 17, 2014 Author Posted July 17, 2014 Thanks all, I'll be sure to take another look at my options and Carywinton has it right, the heatsink is just one long unit with the fan on it. I'll look for one of those devices as well. Thanks a bunch!
ds64 Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 yep, cary is correct, my laptop heatsink is from copper I think??(its copper collored). FYI, be careful if you've planned to bought a cooling fan (to put bellow your laptop). Especially the cheap one, I have 2 of them, and yes it reduced the heat, but at the same times it blows the cool air along with the dust. And it seems the bottom vent of my laptop is serve as an air intake, and blow out the heat by the vent on the side of the laptop. So in my case it's worse to put a cheap cooling fan. Now, I didn't use any cooling fan anymore.
FwuffyMouse Posted July 17, 2014 Author Posted July 17, 2014 Nope, we were all completely wrong. It was damaged system files. ran the repair tool that the microsoft site told me to, and sure enough, found a buttload of corrupt files, probably made that way during a recent restore I did. I had no Idea it could be software related but just played skyrim now for about an hour. "When you've eliminated the impossible, what remains must be the culprit" - Sherlock Holmes. But It's not that easy with computers, is it Holmsey, with so many parts to one whole. EDIT: I should mention I'm virus free according to MCAffee, though it removed one or two in the last month, Must have nuked a bunch of important stuff as well. There's also the possibility that a system restore I did recently broke them as well. Point being, the laptop had corrupt files. Gotta be sure to remember this for the future.
ds64 Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 That was a nice info, I think I should check my laptop for corrupt files too.
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