Shutdowns while playing games on GL502VS

[ran6996]

Hey everyone,
I've recently bought the GL502VS and am currently experiencing random shutdowns while playing video games, which isn't so fun!

Weird thing is that I haven't even tried yet playing anything too demanding, I wanted to finish a couple of older games I was playing before on my old laptop.
So firstly it started to happen while playing Assassin's Cree (The first one).
Five minutes into the game and BAAM. It shuts down on me. (The issue seemed to have resolved when I set the affinity of the process in the task manager to only 2 cores instead of 8, by the way)

Now it surprised me again as it started happening while playing Portal 2. And by the way, I did play it a couple of times and everything seemed fine, but it suddenly started happening as well. After just 5-10 minutes into the game the laptop abruptly shuts down. (The Affinity thingy didn't help this time)

I've tried to monitor the CPU & GPU temperatures while playing Portal 2. Those have usually reached around 70-79 degrees, and doesn't seem to go any higher than this. It keeps shutting down though.

I've tried running the UNIGINE Superposition benchmark a couple of times, and the laptop ran through it just fine, with CPU&GPU reaching around 85 degrees.

For what it's worth, I'm with the latest BIOS version & GPU drivers..
What am I missing? Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Paolomania]

You definitely don't want the latest drivers. See https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?100136-GL502VS-video-bios-update-to-fix-black-screens-cras...

TLDR: use the 378.92 drivers, if that doesn't work try reducing peak power consumption by various means (I cap CPU at 99% via windows and for graphics intensive games I set textures to low res because some of the 502s have wonky power-hungry texture memory)

[Sylver84]

Paolomania wrote:
You definitely don't want the latest drivers. See https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?100136-GL502VS-video-bios-update-to-fix-black-screens-cras...

TLDR: use the 378.92 drivers, if that doesn't work try reducing peak power consumption by various means (I cap CPU at 99% via windows and for graphics intensive games I set textures to low res because some of the 502s have wonky power-hungry texture memory)

does Uv help as well against peak power, cause my temps jump threw the roof, did the same 99% solution but that didn't work.

[Hasrin]

If you're still having this issue, keep your laptop lid open even if you have an external monitor. Closed lid will overheat the card and cause a shutdown.

[ssbob98]

Hasrin wrote:
If you're still having this issue, keep your laptop lid open even if you have an external monitor. Closed lid will overheat the card and cause a shutdown.

This is what happened to mine gl502vs, funny thing is I mentioned that it seems to be related to having the lid closed "docked", and support didn't mention anything like "hey you know you can't do that", only engineering mentioned it here on these forums. But for some reason they haven't bothered to notify support. So they (support) will suggest sending it in for repair where they will throw hardware at it, but will NOT fix it ever because it is a design fault. The GL502 gets too hot even with the lid open, put your hand on the keyboard after an hour of gaming and it is too hot. Just really poorly designed laptops in general, my GL503VM still runs very hot and throttles constantly, will not be buying a gaming laptop from ASUS ever again, just junk frankly. Even bad hardware can be helped with good support, but they can't do that either ... go figure.

[ran6996]

Hey,
Thank you everyone for your responses.

Hasrin wrote:
If you're still having this issue, keep your laptop lid open even if you have an external monitor. Closed lid will overheat the card and cause a shutdown.

I currently never play with an external monitor, so the lid is always open.

Paolomania wrote:
You definitely don't want the latest drivers. See https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?100136-GL502VS-video-bios-update-to-fix-black-screens-cras...

TLDR: use the 378.92 drivers, if that doesn't work try reducing peak power consumption by various means (I cap CPU at 99% via windows and for graphics intensive games I set textures to low res because some of the 502s have wonky power-hungry texture memory)

I would try to downgrade the Nvidia drivers, see if it has any effect.
I've already read about & tried the 99% workaround, which didn't seem to matter much.

Also tried undervolting my CPU according to another thread here, which also didn't seem to make much difference either. Wanted to try it with my GPU as well but it got a little too complicated for me.

Writing here as a side note, that a friend suggested to install the ROG Gaming Center, although I didn't get the impression this app actually DOES anything.
Strangely enough, the laptop got kinder to me since I installed it and I didn't experience as much shutdowns, but really, the issue seems quite random.
Another note, I've experienced random shutdowns while playing Outlast and it seemed to stop when I changed the video settings from Very High to just High, but I really don't think that should happen with the gtx1070.....

I have also bought a cooling pad for my laptop. Hoping this would improve things as well, because even when there are no shutdowns, the laptop does get pretty hot.

[Paolomania]

Seriously, just downgrade the drivers first. I saw huge temperature differences just based on which driver version I was using. Driver downgrade solves most of the heat issues. All the rest is just to limit peak power which IMO is only important if your laptop got a batch of the inefficient VRAM.

[ran6996]

Paolomania wrote:
Seriously, just downgrade the drivers first. I saw huge temperature differences just based on which driver version I was using. Driver downgrade solves most of the heat issues. All the rest is just to limit peak power which IMO is only important if your laptop got a batch of the inefficient VRAM.

What do you mean by inefficient VRAM?

I've tried downgrading the drivers & using the cooling pad, tried launching the UNIGINE Superposition benchmark just to check temps. , and there didn't seem to be any significant difference (temperatures still reach around 80 degrees), I'm yet to find the time to play some games for a longer time and check it out.

[ran6996]

Sorry for bumping after more than 2 weeks, but I wanted to update in case someone else comes across this in the future & also ask if anyone has any more suggestions,

Downgrading the Nvidia drivers does seem to improve things significantly. Laptop still gets quite hot but it seems that's how these models work unfortunately. It got only slightly cooler with the older drivers but there were no shutdowns, at least that's what I thought, until it happened again yesterday.

It took quite some time but still, this is not an ideal situation. Any more ideas on how to improve the situation? I'm starting to fear something is physically screwed up in that rig.

[ran6996]

Sorry for bumping but I'd just like to summarize things for sake of anyone else encountering this..

After doing the following -
*Getting a cooling pad
*Running ROG Gaming Center while playing games
*Downgrading Nvidia drivers to version 378.92
*Capping CPU performance to 99% via Windows' power options&settings
*Lowering slightly Textures settings in-game whenever they're available (For example from Ultra to High\Medium etc) - and still keeping everything else on highest setting possible

The laptop seems to be doing fine for now, for quite some time. (Been playing for a while now Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice which is quite modern and demanding and it ran OK, of course the laptop got hot and slightly noisy but it didn't shut down.)
I'm aware that if I'd stretch it a bit more it may continue with the random shutdowns and that sucks, but personally I don't have any other options right now. Guess this laptops series is not a top-notch.
I just hope It'd hold for a couple of years as it is now..

One thing I've tried and didn't seem to have any effect: Undervolting the CPU
One thing I haven't tried and could help according to others: Undervolting the GPU

Hope that would help someone one day. 🙂