Razer 2016 GTX 1060 - CPU overheating issues

Hey Guys and gals,

New to the Razer parts of these forums as I've only recently made the switch from Razer to Alienware.

I bought a Razer Blade 2016 (FHD, GTX1060) in November which is suffering from significant overheating issue within a minute of running any CPU intensive process. The unit itself lives on a cooling pad to elevate the intakes and allow good airflow. Was hoping that some of you may be able to help me. This issue has been there since I purchased the unit but is getting worse.

I have run both GPU (Furmark) and CPU (IntelBurn and Prime 95) benchmark tests. The GPU tests are fine, running an FHD test with the card never going over 80C. CPU stress testing however sees very significant heating within 20-30 seconds of 100% CPU usages with all 4 cores rising to high 80s and peaking in the low 90s (see attached). At this point the fans kick into overdrive. As soon as the CPU intensive process is over, temperatures quickly drop back down to the 40-50s and the fans go quiet. Performance wise the machine seems to do ok, although i've recently notice some choppy performance on Witcher 3 on High, but not sure if that's just being overly ambitious? The device itself also gets very hot to the touch, especially on the top right corner, near the F11, F12, Ins and Del keys.

I've just dropped Razer support a note, but given previous positive experiences on this site, I thought some of you might have some insights of things I could be looking at? Also let me know if you need additional info to diagnose the problem.

Any help much appreciated!

Mathias

PS: I am of course assuming that this kind of temperature profiles isn't normal for this system, which so far research shows that it is not...

 

i would say those temps are normal for the stress tests you did on this particular machine....it is a thin laptop afterall and will run hotter than other machines with better cooling. Have you tried undervolting? it can help a bit. Undervolting lowered 5-10 degrees on mine in the stress tests.

 

Also since you have the skylake gtx1060 model, do you have the latest bios 2.0? It has the option to disable ASPM, which makes the dGpu perform a little better, such as firestrike graphics score increasing from ~10900 to ~11400, might help with the witcher 3.

 

Yup, as Vistar said. Those temps are normal on a razerblade especially under a heavy load like fur mark and other stress tests. Undervolting is a great way to reduce temps. From max 100 degrees C with throttling to 90 without for me


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Everything you described as far as temperatures and fan behavior is completely normal. The fans kick in when CPU load becomes high (and CPU temps increase). Hitting just under 90C is perfectly normal.

You also need to keep in mind that CPU torture tests are actually pretty unrealistic for most use cases. The only time you'd ever hit 100% CPU utilization across all 4 cores is when you're doing something CPU-bound, such as CPU-based video transcoding. Any other time you use your laptop (including gaming), your CPU will not hit & remain at 100% utilization for very long.

As for Witcher 3... yes, normal for framerates to stutter a bit in some scenes. Witcher 3 is a beast of a game; and it will give most GPUs a workout; especially if you have anti-aliasing and hairworks enabled.

 

Wow fair enough...and here I thought I had problems. Appreciate all the quick replies, very reassuring. I spent so much time tinkering with my old Alienware M15x and having stuff blow up in my face that I think it's made me a tad paranoid...glad i added that PS at the end

@kent1146 - i do seem to get this high CPU usage and high 80s temps in pretty much any semi demanding game (Witcher 3, Titanfall 2, Total War Warhammer) but as you say it seems normal.

I tried the BIOS update but it doesn't seem to have stuck (msinfo32 still showing bios E1.00). I'll take another look at it tomorrow and read up on how to undervolt a CPU as i've never done that. If anyone has a link to a guide that would be great but if not I'm sure google will prevail.

Thanks all!

 

For a beginner, this vid using intel XTU will be very easy and comprehensive. It also talks about repeating but you shouldn't worry about that.

Link:

If you're up for some more tinkering, try throttle stop. It's a bit more advanced but following this guide I got from another fellow RB owner, again, easy to follow.

Link:

I would recommend XTU first and also recommend using your own CPU stress test. Also keep in mind, throwing in a GPU load as well is a great way to test overall temps of the system. Good luck!