[CalcProgrammer1]

I have an 8600M GS in my dv9700t. This laptop was getting REALLY HOT so I got a 17" Rosewill laptop cooler with 2 fans. However, today I hooked up a second monitor and threw PC Wizard's Temperature page up on it while I played Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Team Fortress 2. Temperatures got up past 90 degrees Celsius quite often, even though it was on a cooling pad with the fans on. This was at stock clock frequencies (500 core / 1000 shader / 400 memory). The only way to cool it down a bit is to use it on my lap, where the bottom fan intake can get some air through it (lowers to around 85 degrees). After a bit of overclocking, it got hotter, but I turned it back to normal to prevent this.

Why would it get so hot when it is sitting on a desk (aren't these things designed to cool the GPU...?) or a cooling pad (cools the CPU pretty well but the GPU gets really hot still). I don't get why HP thought putting the fan intake on the bottom was a good idea, and I think that's why it's getting hot. What is the "temperature limit" on an 8600M GS?

[KurrentEweser]

One thing about cooling pads, for them to work right the pad fans have to blow in the same direction as the laptop fan(s). If they blow against each other a vacuum will be created thus more heat. Good design would require the CPU and GPU to have separate fans and heatsinks. When overclocking or while intense gaming it would be wise to have the fans running at full speed. If possible use a utility to manually control the fans. I leave my fans running full blast all the time. With continuous use, the heatsinks will collect dust real quick. So shoot some canned air backwards through the coolings vents often.

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

Unfortunately, with laptops, there's only so much you can do to reduce system temperature.

One of them, as you've tried doing, is to use a laptop cooler. Some laptop coolers work better than others, so if you want the best, make sure to look around and check out reviews.

Also, as already said, make sure that your laptop is free of dust. This may require you to open up your laptop. I regularly clean the fan and heatsink inside my laptop to ensure maximum airflow.

Another thing you could is to clean off the thermal interface material between the CPU and GPU and their interfacing heatsinks, and re-paste them with a high performance thermal paste or compound. However, this is tricky and risky since you've got to disassemble and re-assemble your laptop, and there is not guarantee of a significant improvement in temperature.