[SOLVED] How to fix gaming laptop overheating(?)

[cantthinkofacreativeuser]

So disclaimer, I know nothing about computers so Idk any technical terms. I have an HP Pavillion Gaming Laptop with an Intel Core i5-10300H and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650, it works fine normally but whenever I play games while charging at the screen goes black after a few minutes, I'm assuming this is an overheating issue and wanna know how I can fix it. I use a lap desk but it hasn't done anything, it only stops when I sit at a table but if I wanted to sit at a table while gaming I would've bought an actual pc instead of a laptop. Would a cooling pad work? that's what I'm considering, any help on this issue is greatly appreciated.

edit: for more info I also have no idea if this is actually an overheating issue or not, I just don't know what else could be causing the screen to go black ONLY when charging and playing games, it never happens if I'm charging and NOT playing games, all the games I play are usually cpu/gpu heavy.

 

[geofelt]

I see many complaints about gaming laptops not performing well.
Usually gaming while plugged in.
One common cause is thermal throttling.
Laptop coolers must, of necessity be small and light.
The coolers are also relatively underpowered.
If you run an app such as HWMonitor or HWinfo, you will get the current, minimum, and maximum cpu temperatures.
For intel processors, if you see a max of 100c. it means you have throttled.
The cpu will lower it's multiplier and power draw to protect itself
until the situation reverses.
At a lower multiplier, your cpu usage may well be at 100%
What can you do?
First, see that your cooler airways are clear and that the cooler fan is spinning.

It is counter-intuitive, but, try changing the windows power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100%
You may not notice the reduced cpu performance.

 

[cantthinkofacreativeuser]

I see many complaints about gaming laptops not performing well.
Usually gaming while plugged in.
One common cause is thermal throttling.
Laptop coolers must, of necessity be small and light.
The coolers are also relatively underpowered.
If you run an app such as HWMonitor or HWinfo, you will get the current, minimum, and maximum cpu temperatures.
For intel processors, if you see a max of 100c. it means you have throttled.
The cpu will lower it's multiplier and power draw to protect itself
until the situation reverses.
At a lower multiplier, your cpu usage may well be at 100%
What can you do?
First, see that your cooler airways are clear and that the cooler fan is spinning.

It is counter-intuitive, but, try changing the windows power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100%
You may not notice the reduced cpu performance.

alright so I downloaded HWMonitor but as I said I understand nothing about computers so i'm not really sure how to "read" what I'm looking at here, what temperature do I need to look at?

there are 2 different intel sections that I can expand, one says "intel core i5-10300H" and the other says "intel UHD graphics" and then there's one section for Nvidia, I'm assuming I look at those right?

under "intel core i5-10300H" it has 5 different sections under "temperatures" (all with the current/min/max):
"package"
"core #0"
"core #1"
"core #2"
"core #3"

under "intel UHD graphics" it has just 1 temperature section with the current/min/max

under the Nvidia tab it has the normal temperature and then a section called "hot spot"

what do I need to look at?

 

[geofelt]

Look at the core #0-3 temperatures.
It will show current, minimum and maximum temperatures.
If you see a max at 100c. it means you have slowed down due to excessive heat.

There is also a section on fan speeds. If a fan is not operating it could cause high heat.

 

[cantthinkofacreativeuser]

the temperatures for that are,
core #0: 45c, 40c, 57c
core #1: 40c, 37c, 46c
core #2: 42c, 40c 48c
core #3: 38c, 38c, 47c

so what now? are those temperatures above normal? I use Fahrenheit so correct me if I converted wrong but none of the max temperatures I listed go over 200F (100c)
also, apologies but I'm not really sure where the section is for fan speeds but under the same section I found the temperatures there's a section that says "clocks" and has 4 different MHz listed, is that it? if so the minimum is 798 and the maximum is 3194, the current mhz usually stays around 898-1297

+ some more information I just realized I have this thing called "coolsense" on, should I turn that off? I looked that up and saw people saying it just makes things worse.

 

[geofelt]

Do we have the same version of HWmonitor? I have version 1.43 and it show temperatures in both c. and f.

Your temperatures seem abnormally low, about what you might except while idling with nothing going on.
We are looking at the max temperatures under load.

I don't know about coolsense.

 

[cantthinkofacreativeuser]

yeah I'm running 1.45 and it shows both C and F I just wanted to double-check

I ran a game in the background and two ended up reaching 200F for the max and the others were extremely close:
core #0: 48C, 29C, 89C
core #1: 47C, 28C, 96C
core #2: 49C, 31C, 92C
core 3#: 46C, 29C, 98C

that's while charging with the fans running at max

I'm assuming since I could only run the game in the background that it gets hotter while I'm playing, so how do I stop this from happening? will what you said earlier "try changing the windows power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100% " work?

 

[geofelt]

212f. is 100c.
If one of your cores was working so hard that it reached that temperature, the core would either slow down or fail.

It is simple enough to adjust the windows processing power profile to see if it works.
Just my theory/suggestion.

Or, play your game while on battery power.
It will not be as fast though.

 

[cantthinkofacreativeuser]

212f. is 100c.
If one of your cores was working so hard that it reached that temperature, the core would either slow down or fail.

It is simple enough to adjust the windows processing power profile to see if it works.
Just my theory/suggestion.

Or, play your game while on battery power.
It will not be as fast though.

alright so I did that and tested it on multiple games today and it worked, thank you so much I've been dealing with this issue for MONTHS, I'm so relieved it's finally fixed.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I wrote a post about some hidden-by-default power profile options: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/something-to-consider-for-laptops.3737865/

One of them is to change the behavior of how turbo boost kicks in. It's aggressive by default, but you can set it to something less aggressive or disable it completely. Alternatively you can use Intel's XTU app or ThrottleStop to power limit the CPU. Another option is to use MSI Afterburner as well to adjust how the discrete GPU behaves, though laptop GPUs are often set up to be as efficient as possible so you may not be able to squeeze much more.

The important thing to consider is make sure there's plenty of clearance where the vents are. Since the laptop looks like it sucks air from the bottom, there needs to be plenty of clearance for it to breathe properly.

Despite what some people might say about how gaming laptops never have sufficient cooling, I've never really had a problem with this. I'm currently using an ASUS Zephyrus G14 and while it can get toasty, it doesn't outright fail from overheating. Though I do like to tweak with the cooling profile so there's that.