M11x R3 Several issues! Help !

Hello Everyone !

I have a M11x R3 (Intel i7, 540M 1GB, 6GB) for the past year and been using it for light/medium gaming and.. well.. everything ! I am very pleased with my purchase and enjoyed every moment I have this notebook, up until now.

I normally play SC2, LoL, DOTA2 and sometimes skyrim, BF3, napoleon total war etc. When I'm home I plug it on my 22" monitor and play in high res (1900 ~), however, for the last month, it has been quite hard to maintain a stable FPS to be able to play. In LoL I'm around 60 gps when in a team fight it drops to 15 and everything kinda moves in slow motion until the fight ends and the FPS goes back up. SC2 I played in medium to high settings and now I need to put it on low, DOTA2 seems unplayable and BF3 I get 20 fps with drops to 10.

I started to notice that the notebook was heating quite a bit, so, I installed the apps to get a look and the CPU and GPU were hitting 92o (74 iddle) and 89o (70 iddle) degrees Celcius, respectively. With that in mind, I started to work on the forums and found out that a repaste should do the job. I opened up my notebook and got the heart of it, cleaned out that nasty paste that was before and put in the AS5 in it. I did get a very good in keeping a bit of the heat out and now I'm topping 85 on CPU and 82 on GPU (which I believe is still quite high). I read that some people were using Dust Off to spray into the vent and cooler, should this get me to cool more of the heat? Didn't really see any dust on those parts, is it worth it to buy the can and spray it ?

Anyhow, besides gaming, the laptop freezes sometimes when using Chrome and having multiple tabs opened, I had some stuff getting screwed over after playing Minecraft and trying to mod it using the %APPDATA% folder.. now a bunch of stuff in windows are not working properly (Ex.: Chrome not registering new bookmarks, doesn't keep the cookies, Itunes doesn't open anymore, had an issue with skype that I fixed). Should re-installing windows 7 and formatting my laptop fix any of this?

On the other hand, I was thinking to upgrade a bit my R3 with more memory ( I have 6gb) and a 128 SSD, would this improve performance in anyway, is it worth it?

I am so sorry for the long post, spent half my day yesterday working around the forums and came back with more questions than answers ! I would like any and every advice anyone can give me to have my sweet R3 function as he used to ! If you guys need any reports or logs, just say which and where and I'll provide.

I am available to chat via skype, facebook or email with anyone that feels like they want to know more about whats going on.

Looking forward for any replies !

Nick.

 

Sudden performance drops can be caused by heat (as was probably your case) but after a repaste it should have been better and it shouldn't be 85 degrees.

Are you overclocking in BIOS? If so, disable it. It does almost nothing anyway.

Also, are you certain you're in high performance power profile and not in power saving mode or anything? If my games start running badly it's almost always because i've forgotten to switch power profiles.

You have 6GB, tbh an upgrade to 8GB won't give you the most difference, but an SSD would make a significant improvement in general responsiveness, though if there's an underlying problem for your bad performance this won't fix it.

 

Hi Rishwin !

Thank you for the prompt response. I do not overclock my laptop in any manner other than the turbo it came with. I really didn't check the power profile before I answer this but I'm 90% certain it is in High Performance, it has always been.

Yes, I'm not looking for the SSD to be a problem solver, just to be a overall upgrade.

Any tips in regards to the overall lazyness of my pc (when not gaming) ?

obs: something just came up to me, how much air does your cooler vent off the back of the machine? Mine doesn't seem to vent much air out but makes a lot of noise when gaming.

Regards,

 

Hi Everyone again !

Just something that popped in my mind just now.. Would the Nvidia GPU driver have any impact on my FPS loss? I try and keep it up to date.. The one I have now is the 301.42 version. Drivers | GeForce

Is there a problem to update it from the nvidia website ?

Kind Regards,

Nick

 

Simply it is your resolution in my opinion you mention you are running on an external screen at a resolution beyond 1900? I assume you mean you are running at 1920x1080p? If so then you can expect to see low frames in Battlefield 3 the 540M GT is not made for high end so asking for it to do high end and you can expect to see high temps.

These things are fine to run on external screens for desktop work and movies but the cooling is going to struggle running Battlefield 3 and similar games at 1080p and when testing with the temps myself I notice that throttling begins at the low 90's on these models so with the results you mentioned hitting 92oC I would say you are throttling.

RAM and if you have an SSD will have no effect at all relating to your problem 6GB RAM is more than enough as is any SSD however if you are still on a HDD it would be a worthy upgrade but again would not be the cause of your problems.

Run games at a lower resolution or nearer to the native 768p or with lower settings.
Clean out the vents with compressed air to remove any dust blocking the air flow and keep it elevated.

 

Hello Yiddo,

I do understand that playing BF3 in high res decreases the performance, I am talking also in normal laptop only resolution, the issue persists.

I am now encoutering an error that simply freezes my pc and forces me to restart by pressing the button, any ideas of why this could be happening?

I will buy the compressed can and try and see results. Any ideas on the driver question / windows question?

Best regards,

 

Well yea the vents being clogged with dust can be a big issue, but when you disassembled it and repasted any build-up of dust should have been immediately obvious to you.

I play many things @ 1080p on my 42" plasma, and my heat has never rose above 75 degrees.

Just check your profiles, because sometimes it may be set to automatically change to power saving when you run it off battery, but it will remain in that profile once it's plugged in again. My Asus G73 does that, had it running like balls for a week before realizing it had auto-set to 'Quiet Office mode'.

Also if you're contemplating a 128GB SSD, get that first and chuck it on with Windows and see how everything runs. If you're on a 5400rpm HDD you will see a massive difference just in general responsiveness and you might even find your problem gone. SSD's also produce next to zero heat, have no vibrations (the FAN is now the only "moveable" part in the entire laptop), and use less than 10% of the power. When you turn on your M11x, it will be silent, you will no longer hear or feel the noise of the HDD starting up and spinning.

 

The freeze could be many things but the most common is drivers (commonly video drivers) otherwise it could be windows related/Memory errors/HDD failure. You can run a few diagnostics like MEMtest and Crystaldiskmarkinfo to check the RAM and HDD and rule them out. Completely removing the video drivers and reinstalling them should be your first point of call though.

Although one person is able to get good temps another may not there are many factors involved as already mentioned dust clogging the vents, a difference in the repaste job and ambient temperatures. I am in the cold UK and even with a completely clean M11x with an ICD repaste I still see 82oC when I game on external high resolutions and my ambient is very cool at the moment.

Hopefully cleaning your fan vents will bring the temps down but higher resolution mean more processing from the card so it will run hotter and if you have a cooling problem that is why you are running into the 90's and being throttled.

 

Thanks Everyone !

I am ordering the Dust Off compressed air can right now (didn't see almost any dust on vents.. but it never hurts to make sure), it seems that not much air is being sent from the the cooler outside the pc.

I will run the memory and HDD tests to check if there is some kind of problem going on there. Is there any tests to run if any data is corrupted in windows?

Playing BF3 yesterday (native resolution) I topped 89o CPU and 85 GPU Need to fix this asap.

What stable video driver are you using at the moment for your R3?

Thanks !!

 

The dust will be inside not on the vent itself it gets caught in the thin gaps between the radiator that leads from the heatsink and gradually builds up over time. When these things are flat out the fans really kick so it does sound like you may have a blockage.

Check out this bad boy below Below 90oC is acceptable below 80oC is desirable.

 

Hey !

Wow ! Thats bad.. hahhahaha

I opened up my R3 and repasted it.. how did you get to see that dust, did you remove the cooler?

When using Dust Off, what should be the best procedure?

- open everything up, remove cooler and apply?
or
- just use it with the laptop closed from the outside to the inside?

Sorry to tsunami you with questions hehe.. Any ideas on the Video Driver that is stable?

Thhaaaankss

 

Just give it a few blasts into the vent if there is any dust it will come flying out do not hold down the air into the vents though as you could damage the fan just short sharp bursts of air. I am using the latest drivers and no issues for me personally.

 

Okay !

I will try this as soon as possible then. I'll blast and pray that a lot of dust comes out !

I do feel that there isn't much air coming out of the notebook, even when the fan seems to be on 100%.

Yiddo, thanks again for your help. Will come back with results.

 

Heed the wise Yiddo's words of wisdom - Short bursts of air only

Also as you can see from the pic the dust is caked facing inwards so no matter which way you blast it, you're going to have some of it being sprayed further into the laptop. If you have the time and want to do a thorough job, do a disassembly first and then use it, but tbh if the board's out you may aswell just do it with your hands can of air not needed.

 

Hey !

I did open up until the motherboard, however, I didn't find 1/10th of the dust that the picture is showing.. but it seems that in the picture he removed the cooler.. I believe the dust is somehow between the cooler and the vent that takes the air out of the notebook... Can anyone confirm this?

Well.. I bought the can and it will arrive in 2 days.. might as well spray and hope something comes out ! hehe

 

That's exactly where it is, it was sucked in by the fan but it's too "thick" to go through the fins so it just cakes a layer between the fan and fins. If you just blow it with air from outside and the dust is too thick to come out the bottom (or has any pet hairs or anything), it will just sit in the fan area and get pushed right back there when you turn it on again.

 

That was a googled picture my friend Your R3 should not be that bad but as the cooling is quite small and the heat produced quite a lot it is important to keep these things nice and clean.

Compressed air should do it, if not go for a repaste. As Rishwin says though you cannot beat getting inside and doing a proper clean, I do both my M11x and Clevo on a monthly basis and change the compound frequently and it is amazing how much dust gets in.

 

Hey Guys !

Just to give a feedback, it did actually work ! There was a considerable amount of dust on the fans / vents that was blocking the hot air to come out. I was able to play LoL in 1920x1080 with the heat not surpassing 71-73 in cpu and 65 on gpu.

Played battlefield for 1 hour and both the CPU and GPU didn't pass the 80o mark. Thanks everyone for the help and tips !