Overheating(?) GX640 with i7-720

Apologies if this is covering old ground (I have tried searching, but may have missed it); I have a GX640, about 1 year old which was bought upgraded to an i7-720 (with IC Diamond Compound).

It's idling at around 70-75C for both GPU and CPU (i.e. with firefox only open), but shoots up into the high 90s or 100s under load; the ambient room temperature is around 70F. This seems far too high to me.

What sort of steps can I take to put this value down, without having to tinker too much with the internals?

I'm away from home at the moment (for several months), so I don't have access to my cooling pad (which does help a bit) - nor do I want to do anything like repaste the CPU. So I'm wondering about less invasive modifications- extra heatsinks, etc - but I frankly don't have a clue about laptops.

 

have you cleaned out the fans? they might have lots of dust buildup.

 

Not yet, but I think that should be my first approach; is it possible to reliably clean them without opening the case and voiding the warranty?

 

You can attempt it with a can of compressed air. Just make sure to spray into the intake vents so it pushes the dust out the exhaust fans

 

I had that with my i7, no matter what i did would cool it down. Eventually bought a laptop cooler for it and problem solved

 

You could try undervolting the gpu.
No messing with the internals and should give you lower temps.

If you go the bios modding way, try tweaking the gpu and memory clock too.

 

Also he should fix the fan with some tool during the inflate.

 

Yeah, I tried that.

Mixed results a bit, it seems to be working justnow on openoffice et al but I'm not entirely sure it'll carry over to actually gaming on it.

Still, everything is idling n the 70s for the first time in a few weeks.

EDIT; aren't the i-series aren't undervoltable unless the BIOS allows it, no? I didn't see any option for it in my BIOS, otherwise it'd be the first thing I tried.

 

I agree that the first thing you should do is cleaning the dust out. If you can reach the internals and use cloth/cotton buds on the fans and above the heat sinks would be better. Dust will cause hot air to be trapped inside the casing resisting air circulation.

next is to check if your fan is still running. being idle at 70c makes me think its dead.

 

I just did that and it made a fairly amazing difference on the initial tests; about 20C or more, albeit under a very short benchmark.

Which does make me wonder precisely how manky my desk at home must be to cause such a problem.