MSI 1029 cooling Warning

Just a Heads up, from someone who almost scared himself to death last night.
Do Not replace the Video card heatsink thermal pad on the MSI 1029.

With the way the cooling design is, combided with this board, the usual layer of thermal grease (in my case Arctic Silver 5) Is not enough to make contact with the heatsink. fortunately the laptop kept shutting itself off before it caused any damage. Aparently a thicker thermal pad is definitely called for due to the gap.

as a side question, any one know if there is a way to monitor the temperature of the videocard in the 1029? The new amd dashboard utility can read the prco's temp, but none of the programs ive tried can read the videocard.

 

I am no professional but I don’t believe that the MS-1029 has a heat sensor for the video card.

CS - Unleaded?

 

yea from everything i've tried, I'm lead to believe the same thing, however It shuts itself off when it overheats (at least I'm guessing so, as it kep shutting itself off last night when it wasn't cooling properly. Otherwise I'd need an 800 replacement for my system (the new 1039 barebones)

ATM its running with a really really thick layer of AS, but I have a new thermal pad on the way that should do the trick.

 

I hear you. The heatsink is definitely the worst designed computer part I've ever seen. I solved the problem in another way, which I wouldn't recommend ANYONE trying since it's so dangerous and I was this close to killing my computer.

What I did was to sand down the screw hole tabs for the gpu part of the heatsink with a dremmel power tool. I kept the GPU buttered up with AS5 so that I could see how much was enough (when the heatsink got "stained" with AS5 uniformly in the shape of the GPU I stopped).

I also lapped the heatsink in both touch sections and undervolted my processor. With all this work, I barely managed to get the computer into semi-decent cooling standards. The heatsink is completely horrible and a major flaw. I don't think I'll be recommending this laptop anymore.

 

no probs here, cleaned off the stupid pad and running AS5 just fine.

if you have a "gap" you have it on wrong.

 

I don't think so. I truly believe that the heatsink was mass produced with no quality control at all. I have installed this thing like seven times; trust me, I could do it blindfolded.

Until I took some serious measures the GPU would keep giving me problems.

 

i would have sent it back if it was that jacked up.

 

Me too, except for the bit of me having it "imported" in a pseudo-legal way.

 

An AS5 application will work on both cpu and gpu on the 1029. Hucs, your heatsink may have been a defect, but we do recommend the thermal paste instead of the stock cooling on that system.

I don't think i'd go so far to say there was no quality control, the possibility of something slipping through the QC is always possible in any manufacturing facility.

 

At the moment I have two layers of aluminum from a Sprite can taking up the gap between the GPU and heatsink on my 1032.

Where can I get a new thermal pad?

 

Heh.. I have some thermal pads that I include with cards, but I don't think it's worth the 10$, 2 weeks shipping to the states

 

Would this have originally had thermal pads between the video ram and heatsink too? I'm currently using a really thick layer of heatsink compound to fill those gaps.

I might try the Hucsman heatsink fitment mods, but I'm worried that as that portion of the heatsink is lowered it will cause it to tip off of the CPU.

Thanks for the offer, but probably not.