Do High Altitudes Affect Temperatures/Cooling?

[Shaina11]

I live in altitudes excess of 6000 feet, and I happened to wonder. Everytime I've repasted my G73JH, I can never seem to get it to run as cool as others have on the GPU, mine typically idles around 60C, and it can get up to 84C while gaming, and I have to limit my FPS on newer games to 30 to keep it from overworking and thus getting over 85C.

I repaste it with Antec Formula 7, and I have tried different methods, the pea method, and the spread method. Neither really makes a difference, and I have dusted the fans and vents. Now my question is, could this be due to higher altitudes? Some people have gotten their laptop to idle at 55C and lower, and have a max of 75C, I envy them. 🙁

 

[nooneisback]

Yes the surelly do, at high altitudes it's significantly harder to cool your PC. The only known fix for this is to use a peltier chip, but that's only for desktops.

 

[Shaina11]

Ah, thanks for the informative response. I always wondered why mine could never quite reach those low temperatures, and I only thought of this recently due to not being able to do much more than 20 push ups, thus reading online about higher altitudes, lack of air/oxygen, and the air not being as condensed, this could definitely explain my temperatures... Ah, that could've explained my Nvidia 7950GT running so dang hot as well....

I've never heard of peltier before, I'll have to read into that.

 

[Faux_Grey]

I can't see it making too much of a difference until you start reaching extremely high up..
I'm at 5800~ feet ASL and all my temperatures match up with existing benchmarks for components.

Here's a nice article about cooling properties of air: http://www.electronics-cooling.com/1998/09/cooling-electronics-at-high-altitudes-made-easy/


I don't know where you've found your temperatures from, but this laptop seems to run hot.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-G73JH-ATI-HD-5870-Gaming-Notebook.28191.0.html

I've got a similar laptop with a 1st-gen i5, and 5770M and temperatures easily exceed 95 degrees under full load.

I've yet to see a laptop that can maintain good temperatures while gaming.

 

[Shaina11]

Thanks for the response Faux_Grey, here's a link to one example of a 50C idle claim, and here's another claim of a low 45C idle up to about 70C under load. Now of course, these are just claims, and this is just one website, but I have read many similar claims from other websites, including ASUS' own forums.

 

[nooneisback]

Your ambient temps are also very important, a simple air cooler will not be able to make the temps lower than it's surroundings (it could if there was no strong heat source like a CPU). I also had a personal experience with my laptop, I was on top of a mountain and it got to 120 C, and obviously shut down.

 

[Shaina11]

Most of the time the house temperature is around 70-72 degrees F, can't speak for my room though, could very well be warmer, and it gets HOT early in the morning, my PC also runs even hotter at that time until night rolls around.