GTX 980m thermal throttling

wussification

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I have an Nvidia GTX 980m in my Sager NP8268-S and recently upgraded to windows 10 from Windows 7. I have installed all recent drivers for the computer off of Sager's website. My graphics driver is 358.91, I am also using stock bios.

I have never noticed any heat issues but recently it has been horrible. Playing any decently intensive game on any settings (Battlefield 4, Witcher 3, BO3, etc.) causes the card to reach temperatures of around 87 degrees Celsius. I have turned the fans to max, cleaned out the laptop with an air can and even moved the laptop to various locations to try and increase airflow. When the computer is idle the temperature of the card hovers around 40 degrees Celcius. I have tried many different options. This is causing horrible stuttering and I am worried that it is also affecting the health of the card. I have included a screenshot of GPUZ while in game of Witcher 3 as reference and can post other statistics. I called tech support for Sager and was only told to wait for better Nvidia drivers, which doesn't exactly help since I'd prefer to use my system now... Thanks!

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Solution
As I said the most definitive answer would be to drop back to Windows 7 to see if it happens there. If it does then it wouldn't be driver related but hardware. If it does not then it is a driver issue in 10.

jimmysmitty

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You could try a cooling pad for the laptop. Seems like the laptop design doesn't have a lot of room on the bottom for air flow so it seems like a design issue more than a driver issue as it is throttling like it should.
 

wussification

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This hadn't really been a problem before though. I've had the thing for like 5 months and the issue has appeared in the past few weeks.
 

Quixit

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Personally, I'd clean out the fan and replace the thermal paste with a higher-quality one like IC Diamond (which is what I prefer for notebooks) or Arctic Silver 5 (which is easier to find and a bit cheaper). Now, this does require disassembling your laptop, so I can understand why you might not want to.

If you do decide to do it Sager laptops tend to be fairly large and easy to work on, so at least you have that plus.
 

wussification

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I'm cool with refreshing the thermal compound, but I had already put on some IC diamond compound when I first got it. Is it normal to replace it every like 5ish months? Also I used an air can to clean out the fan 2 weeks ago.
 

jimmysmitty

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No IC DIamond is one of the best thermal pastes out there. It has a 24 hour burn in time (vs up to 2 years for some others) and can last quite a long time (in fact I had a Q6600 with IC Diamond for 4 years without having to change and temps never got higher).
 

wussification

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Yes, so if that is not the issue then I am confused as to what would be. I only noticed this issue upon upgrading to Windows 10. I doubt that that has anything to do with it, but anything is possible haha!
 

wussification

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I just did the driver wipe and everything. Still the same issue. I also ordered some new thermal compound in case I applied it bad. Also am ordering a cooling pad. Otherwise I have no idea what to do about it.
 

jimmysmitty

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Well the last thing I can even remotely think of is to go back to 7 and see if the thermal throttling stops. If it does then it is a issue with the drivers for 10 on their mobile chips.

As I said I doubt it is the drivers mainly because I can't find any threads on any other site with the same issue. If it was a 10 issue then more people would be having it than just you.
 

wussification

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Issue furthered, or maybe better. Upon adding a cooling pad and new thermal paste temperature is no longer an issue, but this of course led to a new found issue. It is also throttling due to power according to GPU-Z which is causing just as severe drops in FPS as the heat. I have plugged it into different outlets (for whatever reason xD). I also checked that every attribute of the computer is set to High performance including the windows power plan. Still the same issue. The only things plugged in are power, an external monitor, ethernet, a keyboard and a mouse.
 

wussification

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Yes it is. The model used to be offered in 800 series cards, so maybe they didn't upgrade the brick when they upped the gpu to the 900s but yeah it's what came with it. Has 16 gb ram, 2 ssd, 1 hdd, 4710mq, and the 8GB 980m. Notherwise sure of the draw of all that plus the display, keyboard lights, and USB devices.
 

jimmysmitty

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I am sure there are some step-up transformers in the system that ups the input wattage but it seems like the wattage is low. I mean the CPU is a 47W TDP part, the GPU is 125W so those alone when being run for a game would hit 172W leaving very little for the SSDs, HDDs, monitor and such.

While I am sure neither one of them hit that max TDP it could be the issue. Maybe the brick is failing to provide the needed power. Do you have a spare you can try or does a store sell one you can buy to test with then return?
 

wussification

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I didn't mean to select best solution... xD but yeah nah i do not have a spare