HP NW8240 - problems with overheating VGA - HP I am on you.

[kamikaze27]

I have had an HP NW8240 mobile workstation laptop for two years now.

I bought it to play games on, and it cost me a fortune. Thats the good news.

Bad news is... why on earth did they put a and ATi FireGL card in there if its going to OVERHEAT every time you play a semi-decent 3D game?

I've had a Vantec Piano put underneath it, actually I still do. I've had a Coolpad before, now I have a new blower which hitches on the extraction vents which I'm "hoping" sucks th hot air our, however I'm still getting intermittent freezes on simple 3D games, like Heroes V or even oldies like C&C Generals.

To HP - thank you sincerely for letting me blow a fortune, AND ruin my whole gaming experience.
"Would you put V12 engine in a ford escort if you knew the wheels were going to come off everytime you took a corner?"

To fellow mobile gamers ... help me.

 

[asusman]

Sell it, buy a Asus G1 or G2.

 

[lostandwandering]

Try using a can of compressed air to blow the dust out of the exhaust ports. Dust causes many problems with laptops.

Other than that I only have to say is that FireGL is not for gaming. These cards are rendering cards made specifically for programs like photoshop and CAD. So unfortunately you blew a fortune on a laptop that was not designed to run games all that well. Note:games will still play on a FireGL card, just not as well as on a Radeon.

 

[killernotebooks]

Email me, and you can it to me and I'll see what I can do.
Could try lapping the heat sink, Artic Silver thermal grease, cooling fins etc.

 

[lostandwandering]

Email me, and you can it to me and I'll see what I can do.
Could try lapping the heat sink, Artic Silver thermal grease, cooling fins etc.

It's too bad that company's like Dell and HP don't offer service like that. But I guess that would be asking for too much, huh?

 

[killernotebooks]

You mean like over at the GuruOfGaming where there is a guy with a Sager that needs tech support?

 

[lostandwandering]

Yeah, mainstream vendors tend not to give a damn about their everyday customer. We're just another dollar in Micheal Dell's pocket. I'm serious though, if those companies would actually take the time to fully help their customers, they might see increases in sales. People wouldn't be afraid of the IT horror stories from HELL. . .i mean Dell.


Note: this in no means is a personal attack against Dell. I have had no problems with their support. However, I am truly tired of listening to friends and family who got screwed over because they had to sit on hold for over an hour or had to listen to a tech who had no clue about what he was talking about.

 

[kamikaze27]

Well, actually I dont really have too many problems with the service as I havent really had too many problems apart from the 3d.

But I must reinforce the fact that, ok fine... so the FireGL is the not the best for games, but even if you render, I expect the notebook to do the same under strain.

My argument is that at the point of purchase, this was their flagship laptop. Why would they allow the card to overheart? Cmon, its a mobile workstation, and yes its a small workstation, but if I could choose between portability and the damn games actually working, guess what?

 

[killernotebooks]

LaW is right, the problem at the core is that these big companies don't care.

DELL's XPS had (or maybe still has) overheating problems with the 7950 GTX card.

My systems don't overheat, but I still developed first a heat sink mod for the card because it runs hot. Now we took it a step further and have developed a completely new heatsink that is being manufacturered on a "one-off" level to get the bugs worked out.

The point being, do you know what DELL did to combat the overheating problem? Underclocked the card. [?!?] So, bear with me here, if a 7950 GTX is a 7900 GTX simply clocked higher at the factory, and then the vendor removes the overclocking, is this still a 7950 card?

My thining is, No. That if you take a card, and turn the clocks back to 7900 levels, it is not a 7950 at all, but a 7900. I have reports from XPS owners that their 7950 GTX memory clocks are 600 MHz instead of 700 Mhz like they should be. I would like to hear from any XPS owners on the CORE clock numbers, as well as the MEMORY clocks at this time, to see if DELL is still doing this.

DELL has plenty of resources, vastly more than K|N, yet they lack the desire to actually deliver a quality product, or in this case, even what you are paying for.

What I would do to the system is firstly, clean it out, then remove the CPU & GPU lap the heatsinks, remove thermal tapes and replace with AS5. Check the clearances to make sure the heatsinks are actually coming into contact with the GPU properly and wicking that heat off of both it, and the video memory. From there, I would have to see how it was designed, and what it was made out of to determine if the thing can be modded effectively so it wouldn't overheat.

If the machine worked at one point, then got old and is having problems, then more than likely it is fixable if addressed before there is a considerable number of "overheats" under its belt.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Nice move dell. They charge you big $$$$$ for the 7950. Then they uderclock it to lower the temps. But they don't return your money for the underclocked 7950. Plus you no longer have a true 7950 that you paided all that extra $$$$$$$ for. :mrgreen:

 

[lostandwandering]

I'm sure that HP did the same thing to Kamikaze's FireGL laptop.(or didn't do since he is experiencing overheating) Like KN said, try to clean it out, and maybe add some thermal paste.

 

[kamikaze27]

I'm sure that HP did the same thing to Kamikaze's FireGL laptop.(or didn't do since he is experiencing overheating) Like KN said, try to clean it out, and maybe add some thermal paste.

Yeah, I think I will open it up. I haven't done that since purchase a few years ago, because it was just so damn expensive. It is out of warranty now anyway.

I think it needs a service, I actaully never even thought of that, and I have opened up all my other laptops.

yeah, I'm gonna open and spring clean