Laptop (Clevo M860TU) Overheat Damage. CPU or GPU?

MarkH748

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Dec 31, 2012
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10,510
Hi all,

It would appear that I have damaged my laptop from overheating due to gaming. I'm a little bit confused as to what component I have damaged however and I was wondering if maybe you guys could help me determine this and also tell me if it can be replaced?

The issues I am having is that while gaming, all of a sudden my PC freezes showing many coloured vertical lines, forcing me to shutdown manually. The resulting screen is shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/UFN34.jpg

and a video of it happening while playing CSGO is shown here.

http://youtu.be/5DzM3T5xEj0

I was pretty sure from googling the issue that this is due to the video card overheating. I had been having overheating issues with the laptop for a while and very often the temps would be between 80-90 degrees C. I know I was stupid for not resolving the issue sooner. However what used to happen when the laptop overheated was that I noticed a significant drop in FPS in the game due to what I assume was the GPU (or CPU?) automatically underclocking to cool itself down. After a while then the FPS went back up until the temperature reached a certain point yet again.

Once again I realise how stupid I was for not dealing with the issue. Yesterday, I got the service manual and took apart the whole heat sink and cleaned it out properly. When playing CSGO now, like in the video, the CPU and GPU temps are only around 70 degrees C but yet the laptop still crashes in this manner even at these lower temps. Thus, I figured that that I had permanently damaged my GPU from constantly playing at high temps.

What is confusing me though is that when I use MSI Kombustor to carry out a GPU stress test, the temps were able to reach up to 96 degrees C without the PC crashing as shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/H6ope.jpg

This made me wonder if it was the CPU that was damaged and not the GPU (both used to hit 80-90 when gaming over the years). I decided to run a CPU stress test using EVEREST but this also hit very high temps (88 degrees C) without any crashing as shown here

http://i.imgur.com/4VzYl.png

In order to get the CPU to reach the high temps during the stress test I had to manually disable to fan. You can see in the bottom right of the last image that the GPU temperature (blue) is also in the 80’s. The temperature is black is the HDD temperature.

So could it be that it is not the GPU or CPU overheating? I’m pretty sure it is a temperature issue though as when I play on an external monitor, with my laptop on its side with a desk fan blowing max speed into it I don’t get the crash, as shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/UI16Q.jpg

The temperatures stay around 50 degrees C in this case. Could it possibly be the memory of the HDD overheating? Or is there a reason the temps could reach quite high in the stress tests and not shut down, but still shut down while gaming at lower temps? If I’m gonna replace something I want it to be the correct component!

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Happy new year!

Mark
 

xxyourdeadxx

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Feb 8, 2009
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18,520
My friend has this model, and is having the exact same issue when playing BF3. This also happens sometimes when he is just browsing using explorer. Wondering if you ever found a solution?
 

MarkH748

Honorable
Dec 31, 2012
3
0
10,510
Hi xxyourdeadxx,

It turns out that my card was failing which is apparently common with 9800M models after a few years. It looks like your friend's card hasn't completely failed yet, similar to mine. I ended up replacing the card and if you would like me to recommend some replacements I was looking at I would be more than happy to. In the mean time I found that I could still play some games (CSGO mainly, not too sure about BF3) but underclocking the card using MSI Afterburner.

Eventually though the card will fail outright so I would suggest replacing the card. If the slot in the laptop is an MXM 2.1 like mine was (I can tell you if you show me a picture of the old card) then you might be better off replacing it now as cards to fit this slot are becoming less common and more expensive due to rarity.

Let me know if you want any help

Mark
 

xxyourdeadxx

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Feb 8, 2009
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18,520
Oh... my friend is running a gtx 260m in his. It's also a mxm 2.1 slot. It's awfully expensive for a replacement :/
I checked the temps while under stress test load, and the temps don't ever really go above 60C. Is it a hardware fault of the chip?
 

MarkH748

Honorable
Dec 31, 2012
3
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10,510
I'm not too sure about the GTX 260M chipset but it was a hardware fault on the 9800M. The MXM 2.1 260M is extremely rare these days. It depends what you consider expensive. I replaced by 9800M with a FX 3700M for 150 euro including shipping from the US to Ireland.

Under certain stress tests my GPU temp would go quite high but not experience the crash. Try this and see what happens.

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/