Heating issues on GT70?

Anandtech just posted a rather concise and well-done review of the GT70 Dragon Edition. Apart from other detractions about the somewhat long-in-the-tooth chassis, their findings were there is a serious flaw with the single-fan cooling design. They continually experienced CPU throttling when running intensive games and benches which was holding back performance of the 780m, and sometimes reducing FPS in games less than an equivalent Ivy Bridge/680m predecessor. They do state that if the fan profile is set to full blast the issue goes away, but the design is flawed.

Do any of you guys have a GT70 yet with a Haswell/780m combo yet? If so, what is your experience/thoughts here? I'm currently looking at a Haswell/780m machine and would be interested in input.

 

On the video by Gentechpc, (GT60 w/780M i think it was) the CPU went over 90c, just like Anandtech says. But I'm quite sure, that I've read what Ken said, that after repasting, he got much cooler temps. So, maybe, the rig that Anandtech reviewed was under a bad paste job?...... but, they are quite knowledgeable in these things, I wonder if they opened up the heatsinks...... what I've read through these forums deny what Anandtech says. Many users praise the cooling capability of the MSi notebooks. Users have reported mostly fine temps. And, then theres the talk of bad paste job by MSi.........

 

180w psu? 10char

 

My personal Haswell GT70 experience is of the hot variety.......after just one benchmark test 82C on CPU, 90C on GPU........sometimes with artifacts!

Nothing at all like the cool ~60C under full load that all the early reviews (Anandtech excepted) are reporting.

I have RMA'd, and have asked my reseller to stress test the replacement unit. If they get similar results to what I got, then I will be going with Ivybridge, which runs much cooler, and is much much cheaper. You can now get from Alienware a 2.7-3.7 Ghz Ivybridge + GTX680M with SSD and 750GB XT HD for around £1500 with discount codes applied.........they also have option of taking Windows 7 instead of the ghastly Windows 8. In UK, cheapest 4700MQ + GTX780M is £2300. A lot more money, for not much more performance, or in case of Anandtech review, notably less performance due to CPU heat issues.

 

Maybe MSI is using a crappy paste now? Or just as sloppy as before when doing it?

Here was how my GT70 GTX 680M looked like. Straight from MSI. So yeah I`m repasting all my notebooks now

 

It will be important to test disabling the thermal bridge. When heavily taxing the system, the thermal bridge can be very detrimental because MSI uses very low fanspeed.

The main culprit, however, is thermal paste. Laptops usually come with a generic pastejob, but with a proper pastejob like Ken did from GentechPC, temps do get much cooler.

 

I thought MSI have stickers on the internals where if you mess with it, you void warranty? What's the real story on this?>

 

You only have one sticker outside one of the screws. Generally there have been no issues with warranty when repasting and other users contact MSI before attempting to find out their stance on the matter.

After running benches 4 consecutive times in a row, my temps sit at 80 degree CPU and GPU, and this is with 90 F ambient temps.

 

@Clodfire
Thermal paste is in good condition ! Only one thing you can do is to use better thermal compound. I can asure you will get better temps about 2 degree Celsius. It isn`t worth of fighting with.

 

Is barely touching 1/3 of the heatsink "good condition"?

Interesting that anywhere I look at MSI laptop based reviews there's someone blindly ignoring problems and trying to brush issues under the rug. This is the 4th site I've checked now and you guys are everywhere.

After experiences with my own MSI (GX660R) which had 3 repairs, 1 of these being directly attributed to issues the service centre created I think there's some improvements needing to be made rather than attempts to shoot down any dissenting voices.

 

Everyone with a GX660R can tell by own experience too. My GX660R was one of the coolest runing notebooks even after overclocking. What do you mean barely touching 1/3 of the heatsink? The only components supposes to touch the heatsink is mainly the core of the CPU and GPU with memory.

This is not an attempt to shut down dissentig voices, this is about raising the real concern and not making it seem like every single manufactured MSI laptop has some sort of built in problem, because they don't. We are all here to help each other out, thats all.

Personally I believe the thermal bridge was unnecessary. I am considering risking it and cutting it to test without it.

 

So can the heat problems be resolved by repasting? I am very seriously considering this laptop (or the GT60) over the Sager/Clevo equiv. but heat issues is a major concern if people are getting artifacts and stuff.

 

So far only one user has reported getting artifacts regardless of temps. I will finish my review either today or tomorrow and I cover the temperature issue.

 

Awesome, looking forward to it! Thanks ryzeki.

 

You are welcome! Thanks for the support!

 

Heat issues for stock and mild ocing can be 100% resolved with a repaste and the use of high performance 0.5mm pads.

 

Agreed. Even me using the laptop on a high ambient temp environment, am not experiencing temps nearly as high as such reviews.

 

They used way too much paste. If you use too much you loose some of the thermal conductivity I have heard.

 

This is madness. How could any laptop manufacturer allow such a sloppy thermal paste job on such a high end product (or any product for that matter). Using good thermal paste and doing a quality job is something that is so cheap and easy to do, yet so crucial to the quality fo the end product.......especially when you are going to put stickers over the chassis lid barring access to the mobo stating "WARRANTY VOID IF REMOVED", thus preventing the end user resolving the issue himself.

Well, according to Cloudfire, MSI have no problems with end users removing thier 'Warranty Voided if Removed' sticker. Now, I would really love to get inside this beast and see if I can resolve the issues by properly applying thermal paste.........its just that I dont fancy my chances of explaining in a webnote to some MSI tech in Taiwan, that "but I was told by some dude on the internet that removing the sticker was ok." These losers have already responded to every issue I have put to them with:
"Please be patient and keep Windows 8, Dont install Windows 7 or there may be problems arise"

Do you have any resellers that deal with 'barebones' units in your region?

If I could pick and choose, I would take an Ivybridge GT70 with GTX780M.

They run cooler and perform more or less just the same as the Haswell (iGPU aside but who cares about that). Haswell brings nothing to the party it seems except a whole load of excess heat that Intel has tried to hide in their pre-release hype.

 

Just get an older one. If you do decide to "cut" it, better place it between the sharper part of two hammers, or something like that. This way you'll seal it, and there wont be any fluid leakage/heat transfer loss.

I don't know how you guys feel it, and I hate to say it, but it seems rather biased to me. MSI is pulling a plethora of awesome notebooks, at least a month before anyone else (you can check the other performance notebooks around the forum, and their expected receiving dates), with some pretty neat features and so-on. It's all over the forum already, so you can see what a single review can do... while we have a handful of users around here.

 

Have exactly the same thought, and the review got so much hole to poke into. One fan = doom mindset also brothers me.

 

He still havent replied back to me why Notebookcheck got lower temperatures when running Prime95 on the exact same notebook

 

Unless he's lying, I don't think he would know. A reviewer should not have to redo a shoddy paste job, but since he opened the case, I'm not sure why he did not mention thermal paste. Perhaps he played with the GT70 for a few days and came to the conclusion (after much thought) that the cooling system was not enough. As MSI is the only high-performance laptop vendor that uses single fans, blaming the single fan is easy.

He seemed too eager to grind all of his other axes with MSI's design, which he liked a few months ago, but I agree with those complaints.

 

Waiting for more updates on the issue... Im really interested on the msi gt70.. However the cooling issue is making me think harder..

 

Do the heating issues concern only this GT70 Dragon Edition or do they also concern the GT60 with GTX 7780m ?

I'm about to buy a GT60, and the AnandTech review just made my choice change... :/

Thanks for your responses!

 

Dragon Edition use the same chassis as GT70 and GT60.

From the GT70 review (Notebookcheck)
PS: Clevo P177S with dual fan is no better than MSI 1 fan.

 

can you introduce me some high performance pads Meaker?
I heard about that: EK Thermal Pad Sheet - 150mm x 155mm x 1mm - FrozenCPU.com
but those are 1mm pads.
0.5mm pads or 1mm??

 

Phobya 5w/mk is easy to use and gives strong results.

 

Thanks buddy but which ones?
The 0.5mm-1mm-1.5mm-2mm-3mm-4mm-5mm?
Do you know how many dimensions pads- I need to buy(mm?)
Because I don't have the laptop here.
Thanks mate
edit:i just saw in other thread all pads are 0,5mm

 

Bummer - doesn't look like the resellers in my area swap the graphics card. Locked the ivybridge with a 680.

This is crap though, they will need to fix this I would think.. if not that is a major issue. I would get it repasted by like Xotic or someone if I do get one, but it still has me concerned how hot they are running. I am really like 50/50 between Sager and this and it's maybe nudging toward Sager now.

 

Gentech offers free repaste What concerns you about the temps if it will run up to the performance it advertises for the full length of life of the machine? I have hotter running machines still alive and kicking.