Guest Veanova Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 Hello everyone! I am the unlucky owner of a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1546. About half a year after I purchased it, it started overheating and crashing when doing just about anything. I returned it to my retailer, who kept it for two months or so (!) only to return it saying that they had fixed the problem by replacing a fan. Fair enough. Three days later, it starts crashing again. It has been two years or so now where I have lazily done nothing, using the beast of a machine for little other than text editing and surfing. Not exactly what I had in mind when I shelled out for this beast of a machine, so I finally decided to do something about it. I've upgraded (and downgraded) the drivers, flashed the bios, formatted and installed XP Pro slipstreaming the SATA-drivers, replaced the thermal paste and the thermal tape. Now, I'm not a professional, but I've built my own computers since I was a kid and I'm absolutely certain I didn't mess anything up. This isn't exactly rocket science. It's still overheating. Using Speedfan to monitor my temps, I'm getting idle temperatures going up and down between 60 and 70C degrees, but significantly lower for the GPU (30-40). Until I run anything on it. ANY load causes the temperature to spike to the point where it crashes (between 80 and 90C somewhere). I'm assuming the variations in idle temperature has to do with processes running in the background. My LAST hope is that replacing the graphics card might help, as it's pretty clear that the GPU is the main problem here. I've read that a couple have done this successfully, but I haven't found any guides on it. Anyone able to help me out? Where can I get a new graphics card for this thing, and is there anything else I need to know? Like I said, replacing it won't be a problem, but I've come to expect the worst with anything that has to do with this godawful piece of hardware. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACP0WER Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 did you ever opened it and checked for dust? over time the heatsink and fan gets clogged with dust so airflow is reduced to a minimum. and i don't think the gpu is the problem because its temps (if you see artifacts well...) are waaaaaaay low, my 8600m gs idles at ~50-55°c Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Veanova Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 I've cleaned it, replaced the thermal grease, upgraded drivers, downgraded drivers, tweaked, underclocked etc. etc. I really have tried everything. I do think it's the GPU. While the CPU is running hot, it isn't abnormally hot for a laptop, and running CPU-heavy programs doesn't overheat it. Only programs that utilize the GPU will crash it - even games like Civilization and Sim City. 3dmark2001 locks up after about 5 minutes, as does every single game/3d app I've tried. So where can I get a replacement graphics card for this computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACP0WER Posted March 25, 2009 Report Share Posted March 25, 2009 So where can I get a replacement graphics card for this computer? MXM-upgrade.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Veanova Posted March 26, 2009 Report Share Posted March 26, 2009 Yes, thank you :) I have been in touch with MXM now, and will order a replacement graphics card very soon. It's a little confusing, as Fujitsu Siemens tech support will actually tell you that it *is not possible* to upgrade/change the graphics card on the 1546. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meins321 Posted March 26, 2009 Report Share Posted March 26, 2009 if your pc is prime stable then it's the GPU. maybe google for prime 95 it's small programm for cpu stree test and btw what kind of gpu do you have? i only heard of 7600go and 6800go overheats everything else came from bad seated fan/hs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Veanova Posted April 17, 2009 Report Share Posted April 17, 2009 Yes, I ran Prime95 on it for 24 hours without errors. I'm 100% sure that it's the gpu, or possibly the fan. Is there a way to see if the heatsink/fan is properly installed? Something just occured to me - is it possible that the fan is blowing the air the wrong way? It's currently blowing the exhaust fan across the heatsink, exiting in the back. Can that be right? Shouldn't it suck air into the computer, across the heatsinks, and then exit it somewhere else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elbit Posted April 30, 2009 Report Share Posted April 30, 2009 Yes, I ran Prime95 on it for 24 hours without errors. I'm 100% sure that it's the gpu, or possibly the fan.Is there a way to see if the heatsink/fan is properly installed? Something just occured to me - is it possible that the fan is blowing the air the wrong way? It's currently blowing the exhaust fan across the heatsink, exiting in the back. Can that be right? Shouldn't it suck air into the computer, across the heatsinks, and then exit it somewhere else? The flow is correctm it should blow the warm air from inside to outside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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