[SOLVED] Pavilion 17-e119wm overheating problem..

[Math Geek]

So i got this laptop to look at and it is overheating to the point of shutting down. so obvious first shot is to take it apart and clean it out. plus some fresh thermal paste.

when i opened it up, there was not really anything to clean out, very clean inside. i cleaned what was there to clean and put new paste on it anyway and then put it back together. the moment the laptop is started, the fan starts at 100% and stays that way. i made it abut 3 minutes before it shut itself off due to overheating. it was simply sitting the at idle at the welcome screen.

after some searching i found a good bit about poor cooling and overheating issues but nothing as extreme as i am seeing. anyone have any thoughts on what might be going on here? the fan works, it is clean inside, and there is fresh thermal paste, so not really sure what might be going on here. i've seen faulty sensors and such but that usually stops the fan from kicking in. even at full fan speed, the laptop is still overheating. i'm not really sure what might be going on here.

sadly the BIOS has no info on temps or anything useful so it's hard to get any readings since it won't stay booted up long enough to get monitoring software installed and working

 

[robert600]

This sounds odd to me. Just before it shuts down .... if you put your hand near the exhaust vent ... is a large stream of very uncomfortably hot air? Just to be sure ... you removed the fan and cleaned that radiator type thing at the exhaust vent?

If you boot into the bios and stay there ... does it still overheat and shutdown (your hand will tell you) or can you stay in the bios indefinitely with no heat issues?

 

[Math Geek]

there is warm air coming out but not hot really. feeling around the case by the cpu and heatsink it is warm as well but again not very hot. not any worse than you would normally feel after a good gaming session or other high use.

i took the hdd out to see if it was perhaps a windows issue but that did not help either. sitting in bios or at the blinking "no hdd found" screen for a couple minutes was enough to get it to shut down. i was trying to boot to a live cd to perhaps get some monitoring done before it shut down but it wont stay on long enough to get there right now. it seems to be hardware related which is why i thinking a bad sensor.

i'm letting it sit and i'll try again in a couple hours. i was thinking a bad sensor but with the fan running flat out, it should still be enough to keep it from shutting down for real, unless the sensor is reporting massively higher numbers than it should. i can't say i've ever seen a heatsink just somehow stop transferring heat so i'm not thinking anything bizarre like that.

the fan itself was in great shape. no missing fins or anything like that. i'm kinda outta ideas other than taking it apart again and perhaps changing the fan itself. i've got a couple that size but i'm not sure how to let it run with a different fan if its not mounted right. i guess i could leave the case open and just let it run with a different fan blowing air.

 

[robert600]

If it's getting up to 105 C which I believe is the 5750's max temp (shutoff temp) that air coming out should be extreemly hot to the touch. I've never had mine (on a G6) even close to that temp but even when it gets to 80 C or so ... when the high spead kicks in, the air coming out is hot enough to make me wonder if I really want to leave my finger there for too long (a bit of an exageration but it's definitely hot) ... know what I mean? Also when the high spead kicks in, there's a good blast of air coming out ... like it would blow out a match kinda blast (not that I've ever tested that but it just kinda feels like it could).

When I was asking about the fan ... I'm wasn't actually asking about the fans blades ... I'm asking about that radiator-type thing the fan attaches to ... sorry, I don't know what they are called ... it's between the fan proper and the exhaust vent. You have to remove the fan to get to it effectively. On G6s anyway, there's almost always a buildup of dust/gunk/whatever there. When it's clogged ... airflow is obviously severely restricted.

 

[Math Geek]

oh yah, i cleaned all that out. not that there was much there anyway. when the laptop starts the fan goes straight to that full blast mode you were talking about. lots of air coming out no problem. that's why i don't think its that part that is the problem. fan, heatsink and the rest is normal as far as i can tell.

i'll keep playing with it but i'm not sure what else i can do with it if its a mobo error. guess i could start looking for a replacement mobo and see what that costs.

 

[robert600]

Ok ... I was just checking to be sure. I've never encountered a problem like this. It sounds to me, that it is not really getting hot at all and (just as you were saying) it is some sort of sensor reading error. I don't know enough about that kinda of thing to zero in on where the problem is. It very well could be the motherboard or ... it could be the 5750 (maybe). I've bought a lot of those 5750s for G6 upgrades and I've never had one fail yet. On a good day, you can get them for $40 on ebay.

The only way I can think of to test whether it's the motherboard or the APU is to plug a different processor in and fire it up. If it's any help, an A6 4400M plugs right into that socket (that's normally the APU I replace with a 5750) ... they're a dime a dozen.

 

[robert600]

I was just thinking ... maybe there's a bios update that would reset the motherboard?

 

[Math Geek]

i had thought it might be the cpu itself. sadly i don't have any spare ones to try out.

i can look and see what i might find used. for $20-30 i'd buy it anyway just for future possible use. if it happens to be the fix, then it's a cheap solution for the laptop owner.

i'm looking into BIOS update or a way to reset it to defaults. could be the problem also. i know it sounds like we're grasping at straws, but this is a new one to me and i don't know where to go specifically.

thanks for the ideas

 

[robert600]

If someone is impatient for their 'upgraded' G6 and there are no 5750's available at a reasonable price, I sometimes settle for a A10 4600M - not quite up to the 5750 but usually a little cheaper and ... not too bad. Used processors are hit or miss price wise ... sometimes great prices sometimes crazy high ... I never buy the ones from China.

 

[Math Geek]

oh yah i avoid the china ones as well. used is a crap shoot anyway and those china sellers make that even worse.

i'll stick to within north america if the owner decides to try that route