Question Laptop overheating?

[ackoman]

Hi,



I have been having some problems lately with my Lenovo V15 ADA laptop (pretty much solely used by my kids, and as such has not been treated particularly well since we bought it 2 years ago). It occasionally crashes without any warning – the screen goes black, the power button light remains on and the fan keeps running, but it is otherwise unresponsive. The only way to bring it back to life is by pressing the power button for 10 seconds to do a hard reset.



I am fairly convinced that this is a thermal issue – I found that the fan was fairly clogged up with dust (now cleaned out). I also removed the heat sink and the old thermal paste, and replaced with some fresh stuff. I have also bought a cooling tray, which does seem to have improved things but not wholly.



I also find that the laptop is far more likely to crash if it is plugged in, rather than when it is running off the battery.



According to Core Temp, the temperature of the CPU does not seem to be getting too high in my opinion – 65 deg C max.



I am running out of ideas for what to try next. Is it possible that the CPU is actually hotter than Core Temp is reporting it? Or could it be some other component that is getting hot that is causing a thermal shutdown? I am contemplating cutting some additional slots into the laptop case such that the cooling tray has a greater effect (it has 6 fans, but only 3 of them are aligned with the existing slots in the case and the other 3 are just directed straight into solid plastic – if I cut some more holes I was thinking that maybe I could get more air flowing through the interior of the laptop.



Another thought - could it be that the CPU has been damaged if it has been run for too long with a clogged up fan, and therefore is more prone to failing when getting hot?




Has anyone had a similar issue, and if so did you manage to fix it?



Thanks,



Ackoman

 

[DanielCalota]

Hi,



I have been having some problems lately with my Lenovo V15 ADA laptop (pretty much solely used by my kids, and as such has not been treated particularly well since we bought it 2 years ago). It occasionally crashes without any warning – the screen goes black, the power button light remains on and the fan keeps running, but it is otherwise unresponsive. The only way to bring it back to life is by pressing the power button for 10 seconds to do a hard reset.



I am fairly convinced that this is a thermal issue – I found that the fan was fairly clogged up with dust (now cleaned out). I also removed the heat sink and the old thermal paste, and replaced with some fresh stuff. I have also bought a cooling tray, which does seem to have improved things but not wholly.



I also find that the laptop is far more likely to crash if it is plugged in, rather than when it is running off the battery.



According to Core Temp, the temperature of the CPU does not seem to be getting too high in my opinion – 65 deg C max.



I am running out of ideas for what to try next. Is it possible that the CPU is actually hotter than Core Temp is reporting it? Or could it be some other component that is getting hot that is causing a thermal shutdown? I am contemplating cutting some additional slots into the laptop case such that the cooling tray has a greater effect (it has 6 fans, but only 3 of them are aligned with the existing slots in the case and the other 3 are just directed straight into solid plastic – if I cut some more holes I was thinking that maybe I could get more air flowing through the interior of the laptop.



Another thought - could it be that the CPU has been damaged if it has been run for too long with a clogged up fan, and therefore is more prone to failing when getting hot?




Has anyone had a similar issue, and if so did you manage to fix it?



Thanks,



Ackoman

Hi , if you clean the fans and change thermal paste , you could check the laptop without battery and see if shut down , it will help do do a bios update just to have the latest one , try first take out HDD and battery and power on laptop , leave laptop in bios for some times and see if shut down , if it shut down you can check the charger for any problems , if it not shutdown , you can add HDD and also do a memory test all this without battery, and if the PC Shud down , if all is ok ,you can add battery and check , also when you take out battery disconnect also bios battery and press de power buton for 10 seconds just to drain out all the curent from motherboard , after that add bios battery and check again ,usually this type of reset will reset bios also to default settings, keep in mind if the HDD won't boot you need to go in bios and manually select gain the corect boot settings, and after that just test and let me know if it work or not.

 

[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.
Use a windows balanced power profile, not the performance profile.
Set a minimum cpu performance to something like 20%

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

 

[ackoman]

Hi , if you clean the fans and change thermal paste , you could check the laptop without battery and see if shut down , it will help do do a bios update just to have the latest one , try first take out HDD and battery and power on laptop , leave laptop in bios for some times and see if shut down , if it shut down you can check the charger for any problems , if it not shutdown , you can add HDD and also do a memory test all this without battery, and if the PC Shud down , if all is ok ,you can add battery and check , also when you take out battery disconnect also bios battery and press de power buton for 10 seconds just to drain out all the curent from motherboard , after that add bios battery and check again ,usually this type of reset will reset bios also to default settings, keep in mind if the HDD won't boot you need to go in bios and manually select gain the corect boot settings, and after that just test and let me know if it work or not.

Hi - thanks for your reply. I tried it with the battery disconnected (but without the cooling tray attached) and it crashed within a few seconds of booting up i.e. it wasn't even being put under any stress. I'll try the other things you suggested too.