Y710 overheats. Artifacts galore.

[gep642]

My Y710 runs very hot. I figured it was just a trait of the laptop, because it still functioned well, and the temperatures weren't too crazy. When I play any moderately intense game my laptop starts to overheat. The game starts to lag a little bit after a few minutes, and eventually artifacts appear. I've tried the same games on the lowest settings to see if that could alleviate the stress on the system, but no dice. The fans appears to be at full blast (the fan gauge in my *cough* "gaming" zone is full) though I can't seem to figure out how to modify or even monitor the actual fan speed myself. Any ideas, or do I just need to call support? I'm using a clean (non-oem) install of Vista with all of the newest drivers from Lenovo's site, and I'm using the bios posted there.

[Sxooter]

Something's wrong with yout laptop's cooling system.  Fan too slow, blocked airvents, lifted heat exchangers on the chips, whatever.  What does the system report the core CPU temp as?

[gep642]

Idleing my cores are at ~56 C and my GPU is at~75 C.

After about 5-10 minutes of running a moderately intense game, my cores are at least 90 C and my GPU is  at least 100 C. I say at least because, as soon as I alt tab back to the temp moniter, it reads numbers of 98 C and 105 C, but quicly changes to 90 and 100, and I'm not sure I trust those higher values.I'm sure I could get them a little hotter if I tried.

It takes at least 15-20 minutes for them to get back down to normal, with fans on full throttle.

[Sxooter]

Given how hot it gets and how long it takes to cool off, it does sound like your cooling system is messed up.  Anybody else you know with a y710 series that you can compare notes with?

[chargersfan420]

Good day gep642, so we meet again... in a different forum, no less.

I also have a Y710, and although i kept Vista, i don't use it.  In Ubuntu i typically operate at around 55 - 65 degrees celsius.  I don't think i've ever gone past 75, even when packing the running laptop in my pelican case and having it spend 25 minutes in there while i head to work (not a good idea, i know... i don't do it very often).

Even at 65 - 70 degrees, it can drop 10 degrees in around 5 minutes, just sitting on a desk in a room-temperature room.

I also notice it runs much hotter when it sits on a lap or a couch, rather than a table.  Probably because the little nubs it sits on allow for a little ventilation underneath when sitting on a flat surface.

I'd love to blame Vista, but it could be a hardware issue... If i remember correctly, you're using Ubuntu on a separate partition as well...?  Does it also have cooling issues?

[gep642]

Ahah, hey chargersfan!

I was actually thinking of PMing you there to ask about this.

Right now I'm dual booting Vista and Mint (I decided to give Mint a shot, since I wanted to set up dualbooting and needed to repartition, anyway).

I've love to blame Vista, as well, but it also runs pretty hot in Linux. That's actually half the reason Vista is back (the other is games ), I wanted to try it out in Windows before someone accused the problem on Linux. I figure it's easier to  try things out in Vista with all the up-to-date drivers before taking the problem to anybody, especially since we have that cd-rom issue in Linux. Maybe I should try things out with Lilo before I jump to any conclusions? Supposedly the cd-rom problem goes away with Lilo, and it might be possible the problems are related. Or maybe I should put the Windows boot loader in charge to test things, then switch back if it's still an issue? I'll probably give that a shot, just to see, before doing something about this.

Message Edited by gep642 on 12-04-2008 03:52 PM

[chargersfan420]

I can confirm that using LILO solves the problem with the optical drive.  However, LILO must boot a primary partition in order to work.  Linux names the drives sda1,2,3,4 for primaries and 5+ for extended partitions.  I don't think you can change them, so it's gotta be set up from square 1.

Because of this, i ditched Hardy and went to Intrepid, and set up LILO.  Bad idea.  Intrepid doesn't support our video card just yet, so if you go back to Ubuntu, stick with Hardy.

I was also able to set up a /boot partition and i stashed GRUB there.  I still use the Vista bootloader (EasyBCD 1.7.2), and it has two separate entries for the same Hardy partition - one that points to the /boot partition and boots GRUB, and the other points to the / partition and boots LILO.   Keeping GRUB was necessary because i found LILO crashes sometimes when you download a newer kernel.

I don't think you can make the Vista bootloader directly boot any Linux OS, i think you can only use it to chain-boot GRUB or LILO.... So to me, the best option was to use all three...

Let me know if you need any more help.  It's been about 6 months, but i've finally got this thing running very smoothly.