Laptop heated in sleeve.. damage possible?

[tbartoli]

So I thought my laptop went to sleep but it didn't and I put it in my sleeve for like 4 hours. The screen was awake and all.

Although I didn't have any games playing or anything (it was just on my desktop) it inevitably heat up and when I took it out the sleeve was hot and the entire laptop was hot. Not insanely hot but usually only a few parts of it usually get that hot when gaming etc. This time it was the entire laptop since it was essentially oven-ing itself.

I opened a temperature reader after opening the laptop and seeing that it was still awake (screen on and all) and it read around 65-68C for the CPU.
I know the parts of laptops are heat resistance but since some parts never really get hot was wondering if there may be damage?
Its an expensive gaming laptop, very slim build.

Thanks

 

[kurtis stryker]

There could be damage anytime something gets hot. In your case. I would reboot. Check for anything that does not look or sound normal. 65-68 is a little high. Most CPU under load pull 60. The danger point is anything reaching 80c or higher. So I think you should be fine.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Very possible. But if it was only at about 68°C it was probably ok. This is why you should never enclose your laptop unless it's OFF. Even if it WAS asleep, there are conditions like wake on lan, mouse movements (That simply moving the unit could accidentally trigger) that can wake the unit while it's in there. You're very lucky if you didn't cook it. I'd keep a very close eye on temps for the near future just to be safe.

 

[Darkbreeze]

There could be damage anytime something gets hot. In your case. I would reboot. Check for anything that does not look or sound normal. 65-68 is a little high. Most CPU under load pull 60. The danger point is anything reaching 80c or higher. So I think you should be fine.

Wrong. Intel chips don't even throttle until 95-100°C, thermal trigger isn't until 115-120°C where it will forcibly shut down.

AMD can go as high as 70-75°C before throttling and won't shut down until about 85-90°C or ten degrees past thermal margin. I do agree a reboot and some testing would be a good idea though. Although, if there's damage, it's likely to the CPU and not much can be done about it aside from replacement, so it either IS or IS NOT damaged, and no amount of "being careful" or "taking it easy" is going to change that.

 

[dark_strike]

You're fine. The correct temps of a CPU under load is between 60 and 65c. 75c or over is usually pushing it. The temps that become damaging are 80 and above. So seeing as the CPU was 68c ( 154.4f) You are well within safe numbers. Hope this helped.

 

[tbartoli]

I could still send it in and get a replacement actually. After your comments i'm highly considering it just to be safe. It cooled down completely in about 10 minutes though. But damn..

Would I know if any damage was done, as in would there be a visible problem or could damage = marginally slower laptop?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Something to note though, is the fact that once you removed it from the sleeve, temps likely dropped rather quickly once cooler air was introduced through the heatsink and the numbers you saw were likely NOT representative of the heat it actually reached. Accordingly though, once it reached throttling temps it would have underclocked and undervolted the cores so that it remained below throttling temps but if that was NOT enough to keep it below thermal trigger temps, it would have been shut off when you reopened it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Damage would be more likely to = errors, than slowing. Processors that heat quickly and refuse to stay within normal temperature ranges, and frequent errors or systems that begin freezing up, bsod or just rebooting for no reason, would be likely to have been damaged. IF you don't experience ANY of those, you're probably fine.

 

[tbartoli]

Thanks for the information darkbreeze! I am not seeing any obvious errors. I imagine the laptop would have turned itself off if it became too hot right? In any case, I feel like slowing would be worse as i'd like to game, and slowing is way less obvious. I could always do 3DMark tests to see if its as fast as before yeah?

Thanks man!

 

[dark_strike]

There could be damage anytime something gets hot. In your case. I would reboot. Check for anything that does not look or sound normal. 65-68 is a little high. Most CPU under load pull 60. The danger point is anything reaching 80c or higher. So I think you should be fine.

Wrong. Intel chips don't even throttle until 95-100°C, thermal trigger isn't until 115-120°C where it will forcibly shut down.

AMD can go as high as 70-75°C before throttling and won't shut down until about 85-90°C or ten degrees past thermal margin. I do agree a reboot and some testing would be a good idea though. Although, if there's damage, it's likely to the CPU and not much can be done about it aside from replacement, so it either IS or IS NOT damaged, and no amount of "being careful" or "taking it easy" is going to change that.

Wrong industry standard, tech standard says that you don't want your CPU reaching past 80. You are wrong about the thermal trigger. That is a safety precaution to help save computers. Not a temp at which you should hit. That is like saying "I just push on my cd rom tray so it goes back in" That is a safety so if the tray is bumped it retracts. Doing constant pushing strips gears. Even a lot of posts here on this site people have warned not to go past 80c. I asked a guy who worked at intel about an I5 model as he said max temp was 76c although on the spec sheet shut off was 110c.

 

[dark_strike]

Thanks for the information darkbreeze! I am not seeing any obvious errors. I imagine the laptop would have turned itself off if it became too hot right? In any case, I feel like slowing would be worse as i'd like to game, and slowing is way less obvious. I could always do 3DMark tests to see if its as fast as before yeah?

Thanks man!

Yes. If you have benchmarking software like that. It never hurts if you think something is wrong. Run it and see what you get. Like I said. In the 60's is fine. It was just in the sleeve and could not displace the heat good enough.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I never said ANYTHING about wanting it to get that high. Once it's there, damage has likely already occurred. But the unit would have been shut down if thermal trigger temps had been reached, which it wasn't. Even throttling temps can cause damage, but is far less likely than at trigger temps. In most cases you can operate safely throughout the full thermal envelope without issue. And I don't know what "tech standard" you're referring to, but I go by the Intel and AMD specs. You learn the reality of those specs here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1800828/intel-temperature-guide.html


And here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1128821/amd-temp-information-and-guide

 

[Darkbreeze]

Wrong industry standard, tech standard says that you don't want your CPU reaching past 80. You are wrong about the thermal trigger. That is a safety precaution to help save computers. Not a temp at which you should hit. That is like saying "I just push on my cd rom tray so it goes back in" That is a safety so if the tray is bumped it retracts. Doing constant pushing strips gears. Even a lot of posts here on this site people have warned not to go past 80c. I asked a guy who worked at intel about an I5 model as he said max temp was 76c although on the spec sheet shut off was 110c.

The guy who worked for Intel and told you that must have been sweeping floors, not engineering hardware platforms.

 

[dark_strike]

Wrong industry standard, tech standard says that you don't want your CPU reaching past 80. You are wrong about the thermal trigger. That is a safety precaution to help save computers. Not a temp at which you should hit. That is like saying "I just push on my cd rom tray so it goes back in" That is a safety so if the tray is bumped it retracts. Doing constant pushing strips gears. Even a lot of posts here on this site people have warned not to go past 80c. I asked a guy who worked at intel about an I5 model as he said max temp was 76c although on the spec sheet shut off was 110c.

The guy who worked for Intel and told you that must have been sweeping floors, not engineering hardware platforms.

Sure, because the statement he made like that. That is useful and practical would never come out of a smart person.

 

[tbartoli]

I'm no thermodynamics expert but I would imagine, since the laptop was just awake but no heavy programs were running (like games or anything), the laptop itself would not be generating too much heat. It would build up in the case over time, but if the laptop is only generating like 60C of heat, could the laptop ever go above that?

To update on its status, I did a Fire Strike test and it got 2 points over the last test I did. However, the last test I did was also after the same thing happened but it was only in the sleeve for 1.5 hours that time. That test was about 100 points under what I got when I first got the laptop, but I attributed that to adding games and taking up space on my SSD.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you can pass a Fire Strike test with any kind of decent score, it's probably ok. Honestly, I'd download and run Prime95 version 26.6, run it on Small FFT for ten minutes, and if it doesn't exceed thermal limits, it's probably ok. Use ONLY version 26.6 and ONLY on Small FFT. P95 uses steady state testing to determine thermal limits, unlike a lot of other utilities, and is a better method of evaluating thermal compliance.

http://windows-downloads-center.blogspot.com/2011/04/prime95-266.html

 

[tbartoli]

So even if the score is a bit lower its probably not due to damage right? As you said, it'd manifest itself in different ways?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Most likely. Keep an eye on your core multipliers and speeds using Core Temp or HWinfo (NOT HWmonitor) to see if there excessive temps or throttling going on under loads that SHOULD NOT be causing said events to happen. And also keep an eye out for errors. As I said, running Prime95 v26.6 will tell you if there are any indications of errors, thermal issues or instability happening, which shouldn't be since there is nothing overclocked.