gaming laptop overheating?
 

I'm currently in possession of an MSI Apache Pro with a GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. Back when I first started running mfakto on it a year and a half ago, the GPU produced about 700 GHz-d/day as expected. However, the throughput has dropped to around 50% over time. mfakto still produces about 700 GHz-d/day on startup but will quickly slow down to 360 to 380 GHz-d/day after about a minute.

Prime95's performance doesn't seem to have changed much, but stopping all Prime95 workers does bump the GPU performance to 560 GHz-d/day or so. In addition, the keyboard does feel a bit hotter to the touch than it used to be. I tried to clean the fans with an air duster, but this didn't seem to make a difference. Any idea what part of the computer might be overheating?

I guess I could open it up, but I'd rather not risk damaging a work computer.

[QUOTE=ixfd64;551853]I tried to clean the fans with an air duster, but this didn't seem to make a difference. Any idea what part of the computer might be overheating?[/QUOTE]The fan.

It needs more than cleaning. It needs changing. The bearings have worn out.

If you want to get the fan to last more than 5 minutes then you need to find one with ball bearings, not those cheap bushes your current fan has.

Just blowing air in a laptop will not clean it up much. In some laptops you can blow air in the exhaust vents ... but that disperses the accumulated dirt in the laptop. For a thorough cleaning, you have to open up the lid (which can be a pain to do in more recent laptops.)

I don't think the throttling is caused by malfunctioning fans, but you should be able to test them with the manufacturer's diagnostics And if your fans do indeed need be replaced, you would have to open up the laptop anyway.

If still under warranty you could try to get it serviced ... in the hope they would indeed clean the thing up and change the fans if necessary.

Jacob

[QUOTE=ixfd64;551853]I guess I could open it up, but I'd rather not risk damaging a [B]work[/B] computer.[/QUOTE]Sounds like an employer provided machine. Raise the issue with your employer's IT support staff. It's really interfering with your productivity at work. Either it's under warranty, extended warranty, or a hardware-savvy support guy can open it up and clean it with canned or dry oil-free compressed air. I sent one back to Dell in which the fan failed within the one year warranty. Or just blast it through intake and exhaust openings for a couple of seconds each, repeatedly, until reaching diminishing returns. (I've seen grapefruit-sized visible dust clouds come out of laptops this way.) A kit of tools for opening laptops and cellphones is a minor cost compared to an hour of an employee's time. Or it's just past its life span and they should replace it for you with one with a newer faster GPU. Do take care to keep the use area as free of dust and lint as practical. ;)

Thanks for the responses.

[QUOTE=kriesel;551868]Sounds like an employer provided machine. Raise the issue with your employer's IT support staff. It's really interfering with your productivity at work.[/QUOTE]

I'm mainly using this computer to run automated tests on Unity apps. It still does its job without problems, but I'd obviously like to resolve the performance issues if possible!

Also, this computer isn't actually owned by the IT department and was bought using my team's budget. I guess I'll have to ask around to see who's responsible for these purchases. In the meantime, I'll see if Open Hardware Monitor turns up anything unusual.

[mod note]

The debate about gender biases has been moved to a separate thread: [url]https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=25789[/url]

You will need to do a "deep clean" of that, which may involve opening the box and re-seating of the CPU+GPU heat pipes (those laptops have a common heatsink for all the hardware which produces heat inside). That is because the thermal paste, or thermal pads (the toothpaste stuff between the CPU/GPU and the heat pipes) gets dry in time, and won't properly transfer the heat. For sure you can find a youtube video with a guy (edit: sorry, I am still the same misogynistic old man :razz:) doing that for your laptop or for a similar model, to have an idea.

Cleaning the fans and removing dust clogs (as advised by other people here) will help sometimes, but for old laptops, the problem is not the fans and pipes, they may still properly dissipate the heat after cleaning, assuming the heat reaches them. The real problem is that the heat won't reach them, because the paste designed to transfer this heat from the CPU/GPU/chipset got dried in time and won't do its job anymore. The job is easy to do, and it only needs some time and a good paste (which can be bought in any computer shop for few bucks, google "arctic thermal paste").

The strange thing is that the GPU performs "normally" for a short time after mfaktc launches. Even after I quit and immediately restart mfaktc, the performance will top out at around 700 GHz-d/day for a few seconds. I ran Open Hardware Monitor but didn't see anything unusual either.

Based on the symptoms, I also suspect the issue is with the thermal paste.

[QUOTE=ixfd64;553613]The strange thing is that the GPU performs "normally" for a short time after mfaktc launches.[/QUOTE]Could be an extreme case of dusty fins, or a failed fan. A good blowout with clean compressed air may help.

Or perhaps it's power supply aging. (I've seen gpus go to ~half speed too.) Try using nvidia-smi to set a lower power operation, that's more efficient.
Something analogous to [CODE]:d0 gtx1050ti 52.5 to 75 W
"c:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe" -i 1 -pl 53[/CODE]Note, nvidia-smi's idea of device number may not match the GIMPS application's.
Use nvidia-smi with no parameters to get a numbered device list.
Use --query to show max and min power and a lot more for a given device.
See [URL]https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=490744&postcount=15[/URL] for an example.

GPU-Z's sensors tab can be useful, graphing clock rate and temperature etc. versus time, and can do logging too.

Good luck!