ABSURDLY High Idle Temps?

Hey, just wondering if my idle temps are around the norm, or if any of you guys are experiencing the same thing. Right now, I have another monitor hooked up, but haven't been gaming or anything intensive and my CPU rests at around 75 -85 degrees Celsius, which I think is a bit ridiculous. When I game, I get around 98 degrees. Keep in mind that this is with this Amazon.com: Logitech Cooling Pad N200 with USB-Powered 2-Speed Fan (939-000346): Electronics cooling pad underneath . I'm not too worried about my GPU and hard drive, as both idle at around 50 degrees. So, is anyone else experiencing this, or have you in the past? Do you guys think that my idle temps will go down to at least 50 degrees if I repaste? Thanks in advance.

 

Most likely blocked cooling fins.

 

Well, I'm assuming you are running a laptop since you mention running a cooling pad. But those temps are not "BAD" as such.

I've previously owned and gamed on a Sony Vaio laptop and a Dell XPS 15 laptop's and temps from these have been around 75c - 90c on average while gaming. I have even re-applied thermal paste, Artic Silver 5 to be exact on the GPU and CPU's.

But the biggest factor as to why the temps are so high can be the heat sinks. Yes dust blocking the vents in the heat sink and fan itself can increase temps. Once every 6 months it's good to just open them up and blow any of the dust out of them.

There are a number of factors behind heat.


1) Ivy Bridge CPU's do run hotter than the 2nd gen Sandy Bridges. But temps will vary between these generation CPU's as it boils down to the heat sink, thermal paste and fan along with air flow restrictions within a laptop.

2) Re-pasting the GPU and CPU will help, not significantly, but will make some difference.

3) Certain games will push your CPU and/or GPU to it's limit and really make them work, while other games will not make your hardware work as hard generating less heat.

4) Thin laptops, with high powered components means not enough air flow and compacted spaces that build up excess heat and they are not designed well to expel this heat.

5) Check the heat sinks. Quite often in a non advertised "gaming" laptop, the heat sinks are shared via a single cooling fan. eg; my Dell XPS 15 had two separate copper pipes, one going from the CPU, another going from the GPU, but along the way the copper pipes joined and were side by side going to the same heat sink and single fan. This alone causes high temps. Most gaming based laptops have either one fan but 100% separated copper pipes from the CPU and GPU to the single fan (quite common in MSI laptops). Where-as other gaming laptops have again separated copper pipes that go to 2 separate fans.


The only thing I can probably suggest to you is open it up, remove the heat sinks and fan(s), buy yourself a Air Duster and blow out the fins in the heat sink, blow dust out of the fans, re-paste the CPU and GPU and stick it back on. If that does not work, buy a new laptop?

I find a lot of times these days people are having the similar problems, they attempt to go cheap for a gaming laptop just because it may have a pretty nVidia GT 750 for average gaming, but realistically you need to look up reviews on it before you buy and most reviews on laptops these days show it's internals. So you can always check out how it's presented on the inside regarding cooling.

I fell for this trap a while back when I purchased a Dell XPS 15 laptop that had a some what decent nVidia GTX 660 in it. The trap I fell in was it had a shared heat sink and a single fan for both GPU and CPU. Remember, heat rises.. and the Keyboard on this laptop had no ventilation for heat either, it was water proof. Spill a drink it does not get inside, so this was also a sign of bad air flow / design.

 

Try this troubleshooting. I believe that repasting should help.