Solved Laptop (Clevo M860TU) Overheat Damage. CPU or GPU?

[MarkH748]

Hi all,

It would appear that I have damaged my laptop from overheating due to gaming. I'm a little bit confused as to what component I have damaged however and I was wondering if maybe you guys could help me determine this and also tell me if it can be replaced?

The issues I am having is that while gaming, all of a sudden my PC freezes showing many coloured vertical lines, forcing me to shutdown manually. The resulting screen is shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/UFN34.jpg

and a video of it happening while playing CSGO is shown here.

overheat - YouTube

I was pretty sure from googling the issue that this is due to the video card overheating. I had been having overheating issues with the laptop for a while and very often the temps would be between 80-90 degrees C. I know I was stupid for not resolving the issue sooner. However what used to happen when the laptop overheated was that I noticed a significant drop in FPS in the game due to what I assume was the GPU (or CPU?) automatically underclocking to cool itself down. After a while then the FPS went back up until the temperature reached a certain point yet again.

Once again I realise how stupid I was for not dealing with the issue. Yesterday, I got the service manual and took apart the whole heat sink and cleaned it out properly. When playing CSGO now, like in the video, the CPU and GPU temps are only around 70 degrees C but yet the laptop still crashes in this manner even at these lower temps. Thus, I figured that that I had permanently damaged my GPU from constantly playing at high temps.

What is confusing me though is that when I use MSI Kombustor to carry out a GPU stress test, the temps were able to reach up to 96 degrees C without the PC crashing as shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/H6ope.jpg

This made me wonder if it was the CPU that was damaged and not the GPU (both used to hit 80-90 when gaming over the years). I decided to run a CPU stress test using EVEREST but this also hit very high temps (88 degrees C) without any crashing as shown here

http://i.imgur.com/4VzYl.png

In order to get the CPU to reach the high temps during the stress test I had to manually disable to fan. You can see in the bottom right of the last image that the GPU temperature (blue) is also in the 80’s. The temperature is black is the HDD temperature.

So could it be that it is not the GPU or CPU overheating? I’m pretty sure it is a temperature issue though as when I play on an external monitor, with my laptop on its side with a desk fan blowing max speed into it I don’t get the crash, as shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/UI16Q.jpg

The temperatures stay around 50 degrees C in this case. Could it possibly be the memory of the HDD overheating? Or is there a reason the temps could reach quite high in the stress tests and not shut down, but still shut down while gaming at lower temps? If I’m gonna replace something I want it to be the correct component!

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Happy new year!

Mark

 

[Erick Aguilar]

If the CPU overheated it would shut down itself to protect the system.
I'm guessing it must be the GPU, MSI kombustor is demanding, but not a very stressful test.

Remember that even when overclocking, stressing the GPU on MSI kombustor might not cause any crashes, but on a game it might.

Try using unigine heaven's stress test, or OCCT on the GPU. Those should throw out an error.

 

[pebbly]

Hi MarkH748, Welcome to the forums , When you stripped the laptop down did you replace the Thermal compound on the cpu/gpu's heatsinks , Over a period of time the paste can become weary and needs replacing, Also make sure you clean all the air vents and exhaust ports , Using a 3rd party program like speedfan or i8kfangui to monitor and increase the fans can be helpful

 

[MarkH748]

If the CPU overheated it would shut down itself to protect the system.
I'm guessing it must be the GPU, MSI kombustor is demanding, but not a very stressful test.

Remember that even when overclocking, stressing the GPU on MSI kombustor might not cause any crashes, but on a game it might.

Try using unigine heaven's stress test, or OCCT on the GPU. Those should throw out an error.

..

Hi Erick. Thanks very much for the reply. Ok so if the CPU shut down would the whole PC turn off and the screen go black rather than what I am seeing here?

Thanks for the heaven's stress test suggestion. I just did it there and it did indeed cause the error at a temperature in the high 60s (degrees C). I'm guessing this is a pretty low temp for the card to be crashing at and I should look into replacing the card correct?

Hi MarkH748, Welcome to the forums , When you stripped the laptop down did you replace the Thermal compound on the cpu/gpu's heatsinks , Over a period of time the paste can become weary and needs replacing, Also make sure you clean all the air vents and exhaust ports , Using a 3rd party program like speedfan or i8kfangui to monitor and increase the fans can be helpful

Thanks for the reply. The thermal compound didn't look great, not that I have much experience! I cleaned absolutely everything and the temps are now much lower but it appears to be too late to prevent this error. I would buy thermal compound but I don't think it will make a difference at this state unless someone can suggest otherwise?

 

[pebbly]

Hi Mark, Did you install the 64bit OS yourself ? did you install the correct GFX drivers ? CLEVO - Download ,the crashes may be caused by wrong or corrupt GFX drivers
If this only happens when playing games have a look at the game manfs website ,see if any patches are available ,It may also be your GFX card is not up to playing the latest games

 

[Erick Aguilar]

If the CPU overheated it would shut down itself to protect the system.
I'm guessing it must be the GPU, MSI kombustor is demanding, but not a very stressful test.

Remember that even when overclocking, stressing the GPU on MSI kombustor might not cause any crashes, but on a game it might.

Try using unigine heaven's stress test, or OCCT on the GPU. Those should throw out an error.

..

Hi Erick. Thanks very much for the reply. Ok so if the CPU shut down would the whole PC turn off and the screen go black rather than what I am seeing here?

Thanks for the heaven's stress test suggestion. I just did it there and it did indeed cause the error at a temperature in the high 60s (degrees C). I'm guessing this is a pretty low temp for the card to be crashing at and I should look into replacing the card correct?

Yeah, 60's is somewhat of an average temperature for GPU's, and if it is throwing out errors at that temperature then your GPU might be going away to a better life.

However replacing a laptops GPU... you got me there

 

[kbrady1979]

I would definitely look at updating the graphics card driver, as it is the easiest thing to do.

 

[MarkH748]

Thanks for all the replies. It definitely looks like I have to find a replacement card. From what I have read it does appear to be possible but sourcing a compatible card might be an issue.

Thanks again to everyone and Happy New Year

Mark

 

[oreo27]

Just a bit of experience I had on this a couple of days back.

My uncle came in with a laptop with a garbled screen and asked what he could do about it.

I immediately assumed that it was a GPU overheat issue (much like what you experienced). I got it to actually cool down and still the same crashes. Long story short, it was a Vista Home Premium Factory Install (outdated SP1 and drivers) I reinstalled all the drivers and Windows Updates (except SP2, it wouldn't install after several, make that a lot of hours of tinkering with it; Vista is really screwed up) and no luck.

I went this route because of my conclusion:

1. Laptop on AC power = Won't boot up to Vista/Crashes when plugged in anytime during Vista/Used XP PE environment - booting and working perfectly.
2. Laptop on battery power without AC = everything works dandy.

I recommended that we just purchase a copy of Windows 7 and be done with it. He's still awaiting confirmation from a software company who developed a custom app for him if we can simply reinstall on 7 (app uses DRM or some sort of protection).