G74sx rising temperature ? Please help.

[Sttyx]

Hi, I have g74sx the no 3D notebook, 8Gb ram, gtx 560m, i7...standart edition. I bought it on first days of august 2011. So far so good. But lately I have noticed, that my idle and max.performance temperatures are rising. In the first two months, those temperatures were :
Idle 36-38C and Max. 58-62C...I was suprised, how this notebook can manage cooling without noise.

Now, after 7 months, my temperatures are :
Idle 41-43 not much change here.
Max. 69-75(depending on activity/game). In just one minute, the temperature can rise up from 58-70, and it also can cool itself from 70 to 62-65. And all I do is alt+tab to desktop.

I have no virus/malware or s*it in my laptop. I used compresed air, to clean fans, but I dont know if it did any good. Also my GPU is not OCed. I am running Win7 Ultimate. Also all drivers are updated. Any help or advice ?

Thanks, also I am sorry for my bad english.

[houndazs]

try cleaning the intake and exhaust vents. when you "clean" the fans use a tooth pick or simular object to keep the fan from spiining while using compressed air. you may also need to get your GPU and CPU re-pasted....

[BrodyBoy]

Sttyx wrote:
Now, after 7 months, my temperatures are :
Idle 41-43 not much change here.
Max. 69-75(depending on activity/game). In just one minute, the temperature can rise up from 58-70, and it also can cool itself from 70 to 62-65. And all I do is alt+tab to desktop.

Those temperatures actually don't seem excessive to me. And the quick transitions don't seem unexpected either, since the G74'a temp control is kind of crude.....the fans only seem to have a couple speeds and they'll ramp way up and slow way down, rather than use a smoother variable speed approach more finely attuned to maintaining an even temp. 😞

It sounds like you're already keeping it clean and maintaining it well. I'd keep an eye on the temps, and if you really start to see a significant difference in those idle and max temps, in spite of the fans still running normally, I'd say a re-pasting is in order. This can be done by the owner, but it voids the warranty (there are little stickers that tear when you remove the heatsink). So you could RMA it to Asus and let them do it.

[Sttyx]

Thanks guys, I was thinking about opening it, but I am not experienced in this. For example, today I played game Alan Wake...I set it on medium-high, I had 23-35 fps, and my GPU temperature rised up to 76C and CPU temperature was from 60-63. Only about 17 mins of play, game stoped responding(I have original).

I saw some tutorials on how to open g74sx, clean and re-pasting, so maybe after practice on old/trowed up laptops at my work(I am student, but making some money on part-time job) I will try it. If I am still afraid of it, I will send my laptop to local vendor from who I bought it.

[BrodyBoy]

Sttyx wrote:
Thanks guys, I was thinking about opening it, but I am not experienced in this. For example, today I played game Alan Wake...I set it on medium-high, I had 23-35 fps, and my GPU temperature rised up to 76C and CPU temperature was from 60-63. Only about 17 mins of play, game stoped responding(I have original).

I saw some tutorials on how to open g74sx, clean and re-pasting, so maybe after practice on old/trowed up laptops at my work(I am student, but making some money on part-time job) I will try it. If I am still afraid of it, I will send my laptop to local vendor from who I bought it.

I've disassembled quite a few laptops, including the G74. It's relatively easy to tear it down enough to access the bottom of the motherboard. But completely removing the G74 M/B, which is required for re-pasting, is not an easy task.

I wouldn't recommend that you do it yourself.....for a couple reasons.

• It's difficult, and requires total teardown....i.e., virtually everything is disassembled. If you're not experienced with this, it's very easy to miss something in re-assembly and end up with something not working right.
  
• Voiding the G74 warranty isn't a good idea. This computer (like most) has proven vulnerable to particular kinds of hardware failures...touchpad and keyboard, especially....and we haven't yet seen how other components (GPU, display, power jack, etc.) hold up over time.
  

[houndazs]

Sttyx wrote:
Thanks guys, I was thinking about opening it, but I am not experienced in this. For example, today I played game Alan Wake...I set it on medium-high, I had 23-35 fps, and my GPU temperature rised up to 76C and CPU temperature was from 60-63. Only about 17 mins of play, game stoped responding(I have original).

I saw some tutorials on how to open g74sx, clean and re-pasting, so maybe after practice on old/trowed up laptops at my work(I am student, but making some money on part-time job) I will try it. If I am still afraid of it, I will send my laptop to local vendor from who I bought it.

The main thing to watch and pay attention to when taking a laptop apart is the placement of the screws. what i mean by this is some parts have different length scres than other parts. what i use to do when i was learning laptop repair (self taught) was to take pictures of the part i was replacing with all the screws removed sitting on a white piece of paper with a number on the paper. this number refered to the number of screws that part had. i also used the pictures as a reference to reinstalling everything, just work backwards.

You might also want to get one of the 2 week pill boxes like this one http://www.papachina.com/watermark/watermark_image.php?src=../images/14%20Day%20Pill%20Box.jpg to keep your screws organized. i still use one of these when doing laptop repair to this day. you can usually pick one up at the dollor store.

[Sttyx]

Thanks guys for clearing that out. I dont know what I will do for now. If those temperatures keep rising above max.76 I had yesterday, and they would rise to say 85 than I will send my laptop back with issue overheating. Only thing they will do is re-paste, clean. OR maybe they would send me new one hehe 😄

The main thing to watch and pay attention to when taking a laptop apart is the placement of the screws. what i mean by this is some parts have different length scres than other parts. what i use to do when i was learning laptop repair (self taught) was to take pictures of the part i was replacing with all the screws removed sitting on a white piece of paper with a number on the paper. this number refered to the number of screws that part had. i also used the pictures as a reference to reinstalling everything, just work backwards.

You might also want to get one of the 2 week pill boxes like this one http://www.papachina.com/watermark/w...Pill%20Box.jpg to keep your screws organized. i still use one of these when doing laptop repair to this day. you can usually pick one up at the dollor store.

I could try that, can make photo of each step and write to myself where was what, and I will try it, but if there would be those varianty stickers I wouldnot continue. About that week pill boxes, I have like 6 of them for screws and other little things 😄

[BrodyBoy]

Sttyx wrote:
Thanks guys for clearing that out. I dont know what I will do for now. If those temperatures keep rising above max.76 I had yesterday, and they would rise to say 85 than I will send my laptop back with issue overheating. Only thing they will do is re-paste, clean. OR maybe they would send me new one hehe 😄

Definitely not a new one. A re-paste, as you say.

I could try that, can make photo of each step and write to myself where was what, and I will try it, but if there would be those varianty stickers I wouldnot continue. About that week pill boxes, I have like 6 of them for screws and other little things 😄

The warranty stickers cover the screws for the GPU/CPU heatsink. There's no way to access the chips without removing the heatsink, and no way to remove the heatsink without tearing the stickers. As I said before, I don't think foregoing the warranty on this model is a good idea for most owners. The one trade-off, when it comes to re-pasting, is that you may well do a better job and use better paste than the Asus techs will. (If you send it in, maybe you could send a little tube of high-quality stuff with a note asking them to use it.....worth a try.)

[fostert]

BrodyBoy wrote:

The one trade-off, when it comes to re-pasting, is that you may well do a better job and use better paste than the Asus techs will. (If you send it in, maybe you could send a little tube of high-quality stuff with a note asking them to use it.....worth a try.)

Absolutely true. Techs squeeze on waaay too much paste, creating more of an insulating layer than a conduting one, and usually use an inferior brand (except Corsair, who uses Shin Etsu, but again way too much!). Less is more in thermal pastes. I have gained 2-4 degrees celcius by repasting a tech-shop pasted desktop CPU...I imagine the G74 is no different and one would see similar gains.

[honaker326]

I love open hardware monitor. It will actually record your temps without having to tab out of stuff. It does the min/max of all temps while the program is active. You can also save and upload reports with it. The temps will still be the same as speedfan most likely, but at least it will be more accurate. Link below:

http://openhardwaremonitor.org/


How is your room temperature at the moment? I hate to ask the stupid question, but I am interested. I've had my asus g74 for a few months now. I'm hitting 68c max on my cpu/60c on my gpu. Those numbers are from me playing witcher 2 on ultra..ubersamp/aa/motion blur turned off. I do have my gpu oc to 814/1628/1625. This is in a room temp of 65 degrees Fahrenheit. My temps are about 8 degrees higher at my college due to it being so damn hot in there. It is about 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the college room. I do have the bbk8 (best buy model). Would there be any real gpu temp difference from mine to the 192 bit version? I wouldn't think so, but I truthfully do not know.

Your temp are still in the clear, but it is higher than I would want to see it. A can of air duster to the vents may help. I normally change out my thermal paste every 6 months. This will dramatically decrease your laptop temps. It does void the warranty if you remove the demon sticker....Yes, I did call it a demon sticker.....I bought a refurbished model so the sticker was BS to me. If you have had that laptop for several months then I can guarantee that the thermal paste needs replacing.

You are stuck with two options:
1. Send it back, tell them about the heating issues, and send some thermal compound with the laptop.
2. Depending on how much time you have left on the warranty. Rip the sticker off, get a clean lightly damped cloth, slowly get off the old thermal paste, reapply the new paste, make it no bigger than the size of a period, 12-14 size font. Put everything back to together.

• Have you noticed anything horribly bad while gaming or anything else? If so then go with option 1.
  
• Just having some temps that are higher than normal then go with option 2, depending on how much time you have left on the warranty. If you have less than like 4 months on the warranty. I would just say screw it and do it myself.
  
• If you have more than 4 months then think about it.
  

Just my thoughts on this subject. Hope everything works out either way.