MSI GT72 6QE GTX980m 8GB Black screen at 78C - thermal pads or broken card ?

Hello Everyone



I have just bought MSI GT72 6QE with GTX980m 8GB and the previous owner stated that the card needs replacing. After some testing everything working fine until card reaches 78C and then shut down itself (Black screen Windows working fine) at least I hope it's what it does. There are no artifacts on the screen the card is properly identify in Win and Gpu-z , no problem passing benchmarks (Fire strike, PC Mark11, Unigine Heaven, Valley , Superposition) and the numbers are what you would expect from GTX 980m. So after opening the laptop and removing heatsink I was quite surprised what I found. I know that some might say that it sounds like card is broken (and there is such possibility) but after closer inspection I have noticed that the card might not be properly cooled and that's what triggers Black screen. So I would like to know if anyone know the thickness of the thermal pads for this model as I will start with that before buying new GTX 980m. I'm considering to invest in either Arctic (cheaper) thermal pads or Gelid (more expensive). Will attach pictures with thickness of what's on the card right now and a plain one to fill in.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fj5i0gj2r2h9vy/GTX 980m-.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fj5i0gj2r2h9vy/GTX%20980m_.jpg?dl=0


Blue R22 / R56 high current inductors

Red voltage regulators

Green filtering capacitors

Yellow vRam

 

Pictures are not showing.

Now first question is, is the card shutdown or is it the driver crashing, anything showing in event log to do with the drivers?

That would be the first point of call, does it go to a blank screen on an external screen?

 

Links fixed now. Haven't tried external screen. I don't think it's driver as it happens only when the card is reaching around ~78C

 

Have you had a look in event viewer? It will be under system logs see if you see anything to do with Nvidia in there.

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