[HARDWARE MOD] Clevo P150/P170 cooling system (solutions here)

[laos]

2 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

hm this sounds weird...

1) check dust accumulation in your system

2) when was the last time youve repasted your cpu? make sure to use a high performance TIM like ICD, GC extreme of thermal grizzly kryonaut

3) check if your cpu heatsink makes proper contact with the cpu die

4) check if your cpu heatsink heatpipes are damaged and working properly (get hot instantly when u heat up one end and touch the other)

5) when on desktop idle, check your task manager to make sure no background processes unnecessarily stress the cpu (botnet malware is known to do that)

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I was a bit worried about tearing it open, but the throttling got so bad i went ahead, opened it, found a chunk of dirt jammed in the heatsink, as well as some dried out IC thermal paste that had oozed out from the interface and along the sides. I cleaned it all up, applied arctic silver, and whattaya know, it's doing great now. Nothing above 90C and idling as low as 35-40C now, so it looks like that was the issue all along.

 

On 12/24/2015 at 11:33 AM, Bakedtikkapudding said:

The CPU heatsink of a P170xx is entirely made of copper (see attached image), this does not apply for a P150xx CPU heatsink. Try to get hold of a P170xx CPU heatsink, this will reduce the temperature significantly. I believe it is not really expensive

Never realized until now it's a copper pipe with some other metal (steel? aluminum?) fins. I see this for $30 on aliexpress, but I just reapplied the paste and it's pretty good for now, but i'll keep this in mind if I ever want to replace the heatsink with something more conductive.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Turns out it was something fixable after all.

[jaybee83]

with high temps, it usually is a quick fix and yes, the 15 incher has aluminum hestsink fins, whereas the 17 incher gives u all copper on the cpu side. based on reports it can get you around 3-5C less, nothing to sniff at for such a bargain price!

what are your load / gaming temps like now?

been playing some tomb raider lately and maxxed out with all effects, max AA, AF, tressFX and whatnot at 2880x1620 resolution both cpu and gpu are in the mid 60s 980M at stock, cpu at 4.3ghz all cores with fans on auto

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[laos]

1 hour ago, jaybee83 said:

 

with high temps, it usually is a quick fix and yes, the 15 incher has aluminum hestsink fins, whereas the 17 incher gives u all copper on the cpu side. based on reports it can get you around 3-5C less, nothing to sniff at for such a bargain price!

what are your load / gaming temps like now?

been playing some tomb raider lately and maxxed out with all effects, max AA, AF, tressFX and whatnot at 2880x1620 resolution both cpu and gpu are in the mid 60s 980M at stock, cpu at 4.3ghz all cores with fans on auto

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Wow 3-5C really? That's pretty good for $30. Right now I'm on GTA V Very High 1080p, went from 98C to 75C -- however XTU is still reporting thermal throttling and I'm not sure why. Frame rates are meh. 50-60 then it drops to 20-30 in some places.  I also have a kill-a-watt plugged in and I'm not peaking above 180-190W so no idea where the issue is emerging and why it's thermal throttling with so much juice left to heat up. It's also overclocked to 3.6 or 3.8 Ghz I believe. The GPU (980M) is overclocked to 1263 MHZ / 2855 MHZ and I'm seeing 65 to 70C with solid performance. 

Are you using XTU? What settings? Trying to see what I can push on this, given the cooling mat + holes below the fan give it some crazy cooling via air movement. I see the CPU jump down 5-10C in seconds when the fan kicks up.

 

[jaybee83]

if i understand correctly, your cpu is throttling right? are u sure its thermal throttling and not power or tdp throttling? to avoid such things, make sure to max out all the sliders in xtu pertaining to short / long power boost, tdp and amperages! basically max out everything that uses watts or amps as units and then try again

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[laos]

5 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

if i understand correctly, your cpu is throttling right? are u sure its thermal throttling and not power or tdp throttling? to avoid such things, make sure to max out all the sliders in xtu pertaining to short / long power boost, tdp and amperages! basically max out everything that uses watts or amps as units and then try again

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Yep it's throttling. Very strange - I dropped it from 3.5 Ghz to 2.8 Ghz and saw performance improve in games like GTAV since the CPU stopped throttling. It used to thermal throttle at 95c but now it never gets past 80-85C, so I went and did the wattage boosts you recommended. I'm still seeing thermal throttling below 80C. Screenshot attached. There's no power throttling option int his version of XTU. Is there maybe a different version I should try? Underclocking gives me the best performance still, strangely. The CPU just keeps wanting to slow down.

 

http://i.imgur.com/IlnkWVZ.png

 

 

[jaybee83]

please max out the following sliders visible on your screenshot and then try again:

turbo boost short power max

turbo boost power time window

turbo boost power max

processor current limit

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[laos]

1 hour ago, jaybee83 said:

please max out the following sliders visible on your screenshot and then try again:

turbo boost short power max

turbo boost power time window

turbo boost power max

processor current limit

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Unfortunately this did nothing to remedy the situation. I'll have to dig around some more I guess. Very strange!

[jaybee83]

have u tried throttlestop?

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[laos]

On 12/29/2015 at 7:34 PM, jaybee83 said:

have u tried throttlestop?

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Yes I have. Meant to reply sooner, but it turns out ThrottleStop helps with the inconsistencies, mostly. There is still some stuttering during benchmarking that I think might just be the limits of XTU, since it only overclocks the boost, and you can't raise the base frequency past 2.8 GHZ, unless someone found a workaround to this.

Performance is def. a lot better. Now I just need to do some fine tuning if possible.

[aduy]

Man, I lapped the crap out of my heatsinks back in the day, I remember I had added a few extra heatsinks and some blowers at one point as well. the resellers tried to make their own versions as well and marketed them as "copper cooling upgrades" the biggest thing was cutting the holes in the cover, and raising the back of the computer up.

[Neuromancer]

On 7/7/2014 at 6:05 PM, deadsmiley said:

 

Pictures of the CPU heatsink. It wasn't as bad as the GPU heatsink. I didn't take temp readings before I did this so... yeah.

CPU with the ID7. I don't like this stuff. It hardens over time and is hard to remove. I haven't been able to do it without scratching the die on my GPU/CPU.

 

 

 

 

CPU heatsink after cleaning. The deformations in the heatsink from where the heatpipes were attached are clearly visible when reflected in the light. As I said above, this is not as bad as my GPU heatsink, which was really warped. It had high spots and low spots. Notice that the deformations run right through the center of the die contact area.

Notice the insulating tape applied to the heatsink. This (I assume) is to prevent accidental contact with the row of tiny components on top of the CPU (see pictures above).

 

 

 

 

I used a sharpie to blacken the heatsink. In theory, this would help me see the high spots and the low spots. Overall it was surprisingly flat with the exception of the where the heatpipes were attached. I removed a portion of the insulating tape. There isn't anything the heatsink base can contact on the short side. I also removed two of the mounting screws. Be care with the little plastic washers that retain the hold down springs. They are small. The washers are split in one spot. That is my machinist 1-2-3 block. One without holes would be a good choice since it would support the sandpaper better, but it's what I had so I used it.

I used WD-40 to wet the sandpaper. I was pointed to a desktop CPU lapping guide and they used water and a drop of dishsoap. That would probably be better. Cleanup would be a lot easier. You just can't do this dry, it has to be wet. It is messy, so do it outside or someplace you don't want copper slurry. I used gloves too.

 

 

 

 

One thing I should have done was remove the thermal pad along the lower edge of the heatsink. I ended up mangling the crap out of this without even trying. I pieced it back together. New thermal pad material has been ordered.

I had 320, 500 and 1000 grit paper. I mostly used the 1000 grit since I didn't need (or want) to take off a lot of material. I got most of the deformation removed. I will come back to it later after my thermal pads arrive.

 

 

 

 

Here is a picture of before I removed the ID7 paste from my GPU heatsink. The deformations from attaching the heatpipes can be clearly seen.

 

 

 

 

I did find a pic of my bad repaste job. I noticed that my heat sink had some high spots in the middle, so I took a stone too it. These are the shiny spots in this picture. You can't see the bulk of the high spot because it's covered in thermal paste. It was much worse than my CPU heatsink.

 

 

 

 

This is a really stupid question, but is the black tape on the heat sink necessary, or can it be removed when you put the heat sink back on?  If its necessary, is there a certain type of tape I should use?

 

[Xenus]

Do you think that it's worth it to order a thermal compound and some aluminum tape, and repaste and apply the tape to the gaps near the heatsinks of my unit asap? I've read like 6 pages and just blocking off the heatsink gaps seems to make more of a difference than I'd imagine. I'm hitting 90c temperature and my GTX680 downclocks itself.

 

By the way, what thermal compound should I use? From what I've read, Arctic Silver 5 and MX-4 should be good. Am I safe choosing one of these?

[colonel20]

i did the tape mod, my gpu temp is  still over 90 degree celsius

[xarmius]

I used some aluminum tape and descent thermal paste but some games such as ghost recon wildlands push the CPU enough to shut down.  would attaching  bunch of IC heatsinks on the base plate help it keeping it cool to prevent the thermal shutdown?

[bennyg]

That's still not normal. If the heat is getting to your heatpipe it'll get to the grill and your fan should handle it.

Are you using a decent thermal paste properly?
Is your heatsink flat?

Tape mod got me a few C improvement on p170em.
Liquid metal dropped temps by at least 20C vs old AS5. 3720qm with maxed power limits and +4 turbo bins and a visibly warped heatsink (constant 10-15C delta between cores 0 and 1). It was my test; it dropped temps just as much on my p870dm 6700K both before and after delidding with it too

[xarmius]

somehow I have to manually change the fan speed to 100% the fan control isn't ramping up automatically past a certain point.

[p3600]

Jup steel tape metod is great, i had big air leaks and now achieved 7*C less, helpfull tutorial THX

[Flu]

yay! I am gonna try this thingy on my old laptop. Thinking of adding an extra layer of heatsink to my P870DM-G

[Scappotto]

Thanks for the guide, i'm going do for my p150!

[roch.mirabeau]

since upgrading my p157sm to gtx 970m I've had elevated temps.  I'll check this out, many thanks.