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M-6850FX heatsink
This is just an informational post for anyone who may be having the same
problem I did. I have a Gateway M-6850FX notebook with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 and Windows Vista Home Premium, and it seemed that I was always running high GPU temperatures. According to HWMonitor, I was running in the mid 50's C. to high 60's C. at idle, or very low CPU load. Running very graphics intensive games such as Painkiller or BioShock, I have logged temps as high as 109C. That can't be good! Upon contacting Gateway Support, I was pretty much told to try lower resolutions or not to run them at all. Then I was told I could send it in and they'd take a look at it if I wanted to (it is under warranty). After sending them a defective hard drive shortly after purchasing it, and never getting a replacement (mailed back in 12/08), I decided not to risk them losing my whole notebook, too. The heatsink and fan assembly is very easy to get to and remove; it's only 7 screws and one electrical connector for the fan. After removing the heatsink and pipe from the GPU and CPU, I saw that the heat tape for the GPU was dried and cracking, and the tape for the Northbridge chip (I believe that's what it is) wasn't even touching the chip! The only one that seemed to be stable was on the CPU. I cleaned everything off well, and placed the heatsink in position, and tried to see under it. No joy. I used layered pieces paper held together with heatsink grease on it to build up until it touched both the heatsink and the chips. There was a gap of ~.015" between them! The only one that was actually touching was the CPU. I have some nice flat .015" aluminum shim stock around, so I cut two pieces, one each for the GPU and the Northbridge chip, polished them nicely with some 800 grit crocus cloth, held them in place with some Loctite heatsink paste, and put the whole thing back together, being careful about tightening in the sequence listed and a little at a time. I turned it back on, and my idle temp is less than 45C. Running Painkiller for half an hour brought it up to 88C. Much better than it was. I don't know if mine is an oddball, or if it is a poor engineering design on Gateway's part, but I think that much of an air gap is way too much to be filled in with heatsink tape. The stuff is designed to fill in slight imperfections in the mating surfaces, not fill in that large a gap. I'd call Gateway and try to find out about it, but I doubt seriously if I'd be able to get in touch with anyone that had the slightest idea of what I was talking about. I hope this helps anyone with a similar family-line notebook. SC Tom |
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