Asus G2s 8600M GT Overheat Issue

[AlexRD]

Hi.

Since i bought this Asus G2s notebook i felt something was strange in it.

After some time, the framerates would get lower. I made some research and discovered that my GPU has an Overheat Issue.

I talked with Asus and they said that they wouldn't ship internationally ( To Brazil ) but only to US and Canada.

So, RMA option is ruled out.

I thought that maybe forcing the FAN to 90% and 100% would be a good idea, but i don't have this option on Rivatuner. ( I also tried EVGA Precision and ATI TOOL)

What can i do? What are my Options, Besides RMA? When it is normal, it is around 65-70. When it is under-load, its like 110-120.

Does applying new Thermal Paste to it, helps? Please, if you know anything that could help, don't hesitate for a second :)

And i noticed that Asus didn't update the VGA Driver for like a Year.

So i was wondering, what is the best suitable driver version for my card?

PS:( Is there a way to force FAN to go Faster? )

Below goes my INFO:

(GDDR2 8600m GT Version)

Thanks,

Alex.

Edited July 11, 2009 by AlexRD

[tombo]

Hello,

I have a G1S-A1 and it also overheats and I can't RMA it. I don't know anything about the G2S but I'm guessing it's similar.

Here is what helped me:

1) Download latest win7 gpu driver from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com , it's on the right side.

2) http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=146088 , search "underclock" (its number 9) this helped my temps go down a LOT, ~10C

3) http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=146088 , go to number 11. I drilled lots of holes in my G1S, it seems to help.

4) Another thing, unscrew all the bottom panels (the ones with small vents/holes) and check if there is a black tape and transparent tape covering these vents. Remove the tape from the vents and put the panels back on.

5) For the G1S, there is NO way to control the fans.

6) Another thing I'm planning to do is remove ALL the bottom panels, and put the laptop on top of a Zalman Notebook Cooler, I heard it's a good idea, but not very mobile.

7) Read this: http://serialize.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/...rctic-silver-5/

Hope it helps.

[ChronicNL]

every driver will work for it.

my bet is on dox 185.85, very good driver :)

[Guest Guest_bluewolf_*]

Hi

I have Asus g2s too like yours.

when gpu loaded(even overclocked to -shader556 mhz -ram 800mhz) my card tempureture is about 85-91 celcius.I am living in turkey and outdoor tempurture about 34 celcius.

I think your cooler has a problem.

[sebastianosmith]

Hey AlexRD,

I have owned my G2S for about 18 months and count myself lucky I've never encountered the overheating issue. However, I have read several accounts and semi-solutions to the problem in the event that I do. Unfortunately I have discovered no way to control the fan on the G2S and I have tried every software tool I can find to do so. Removing the heatsink to apply a better thermal paste is a major pain - about 80 tiny, little screws and several layers. Having given up that route, there is a small "hack" one can perform to increase airflow across the heatsink.

Begin by removing the battery and unplugging the laptop. Then remove the keyboard. You will need a small flat-blade screwdriver (think watch maker or spectacle repair size) and a playing card or something similar. There are three tabs located under the ESC, F8 and DEL keys. Take the screwdriver and gently push down and back on the ESC or DEL tab. There may or may not be a tiny "click" but when it disengages, but you'll know when it has. Gently pry up the keyboard with the screwdriver, not too far, and insert the card under the keyboard. The card will keep the tab from resetting while you disengage the remainder. Work your way across the keyboard until all three are disengaged. You may now lift the keyboard up and lay it aside. You may remove the ribbon cable from the laptop if you wish but remember to reattach it.

You will now see either a black or blue piece of plastic tape located on the top, right side. Peal this away to reveal an air duct directly over the GPU and heatsink. It is perfectly acceptable to leave a hole like this if you want to remove the keyboard and clean it every month. I cut out a small piece of fabric softener dryer sheet - any porous and flat filter-like material will do - placed it over the whole and taped down the edges. That way most of the dust is trapped but airflow is still increased.

Now, it is important to remember that the GPU and CPU share the same cooling mechanism on the G2S. It has only a single heatsink to handle both. The hack I have described will slightly raise the CPU temperature (2-3 degrees C at idle and 5-6 under load) because the airflow path has changed to favor the GPU. I suspect that Asus engineers came up with the "tape the hole" idea after a few CPUs overheated. So, use this at your own risk. You can somewhat alleviate the CPU heat issue by undervolting. There is a very thorough guide for doing this at the following site: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

As for what driver... Unlike ChronicNL, I would not recommend the DOX drivers for your case. DOX has made a great set of driver tweaks without a doubt but they are intended to wring every ounce of performance out of the GPU and that means more heat. Go with either the NVidia stock 186.03 drivers which are now available for the 8600M line or the new 179.88 series from Asus. Either will install without any issues.

Hope this helps.

[Guest Guest]

I have used an air cylinder into the fan of my asus g2s and the temp cool down to 58 celsius in idle from 72 celsius...

It's the best solution!!!

[AlexRD]

Hi

I have Asus g2s too like yours.

when gpu loaded(even overclocked to -shader556 mhz -ram 800mhz) my card tempureture is about 85-91 celcius.I am living in turkey and outdoor tempurture about 34 celcius.

I think your cooler has a problem.

Ok, so it is for sure.

Hey AlexRD,

I have owned my G2S for about 18 months and count myself lucky I've never encountered the overheating issue. However, I have read several accounts and semi-solutions to the problem in the event that I do. Unfortunately I have discovered no way to control the fan on the G2S and I have tried every software tool I can find to do so. Removing the heatsink to apply a better thermal paste is a major pain - about 80 tiny, little screws and several layers. Having given up that route, there is a small "hack" one can perform to increase airflow across the heatsink.

Begin by removing the battery and unplugging the laptop. Then remove the keyboard. You will need a small flat-blade screwdriver (think watch maker or spectacle repair size) and a playing card or something similar. There are three tabs located under the ESC, F8 and DEL keys. Take the screwdriver and gently push down and back on the ESC or DEL tab. There may or may not be a tiny "click" but when it disengages, but you'll know when it has. Gently pry up the keyboard with the screwdriver, not too far, and insert the card under the keyboard. The card will keep the tab from resetting while you disengage the remainder. Work your way across the keyboard until all three are disengaged. You may now lift the keyboard up and lay it aside. You may remove the ribbon cable from the laptop if you wish but remember to reattach it.

You will now see either a black or blue piece of plastic tape located on the top, right side. Peal this away to reveal an air duct directly over the GPU and heatsink. It is perfectly acceptable to leave a hole like this if you want to remove the keyboard and clean it every month. I cut out a small piece of fabric softener dryer sheet - any porous and flat filter-like material will do - placed it over the whole and taped down the edges. That way most of the dust is trapped but airflow is still increased.

Now, it is important to remember that the GPU and CPU share the same cooling mechanism on the G2S. It has only a single heatsink to handle both. The hack I have described will slightly raise the CPU temperature (2-3 degrees C at idle and 5-6 under load) because the airflow path has changed to favor the GPU. I suspect that Asus engineers came up with the "tape the hole" idea after a few CPUs overheated. So, use this at your own risk. You can somewhat alleviate the CPU heat issue by undervolting. There is a very thorough guide for doing this at the following site: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

As for what driver... Unlike ChronicNL, I would not recommend the DOX drivers for your case. DOX has made a great set of driver tweaks without a doubt but they are intended to wring every ounce of performance out of the GPU and that means more heat. Go with either the NVidia stock 186.03 drivers which are now available for the 8600M line or the new 179.88 series from Asus. Either will install without any issues.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot, i am going to try it out today, thanks again.

I have used an air cylinder into the fan of my asus g2s and the temp cool down to 58 celsius in idle from 72 celsius...

It's the best solution!!!

What do you mean by an air cylinder? i think a picture would help :)

[Guest Wred]

You sir unfortunately have a defective nVidia card on your Asus G2S just like me. You have a 8600M Rev _A_ . There are 18 million of these cards on the market and they are all officially defective. nVidia announced replacement cards (rev :) in December and a few companies such as Dell and Apple have addressed the issue - there was a class action lawsuit against nVidia so they had no choice. Asus on the other hand has been refusing to fix my machine - even with the no questions asked replacement. I RMA'd my laptop a few months ago and they actually gave me a card that's even worse than the first one I had. They initially claimed they had to test the new cards before providing them to their clients. Now they claim they've never heard of it. I loved Asus - I now think they're one of the worst manufacturers and I generally tell my friends to avoid them like the plague. I must have bought at least a dozen Asus boxes over the years but the treatment I've had with my G2S which I've owned for nearly two years now is ridiculous. My G2S has NEVER worked properly. It's simple. Run a DPC latency checker. If you're getting interrupts in the 1000ms or more range, you can't play games or listen to mp3s without hickups or screen lag. Gaming laptop my arse. I wonder if they ever tested them with real games or even noticed the screen lag.

BTW, if the heating issue is the only problem, there's a tutorial online showing how to remove a few stickers that are BLOCKING fans in your G2S. More Asus idiocy. It greatly improved the heating problem on mine. My problem has nothing to do with heat. It has to do with the fact that the damn GPUs don't even work!

[Guest Wred]

@AlexRD:

Could you post a screen shot of a DPC latency check on your machine? You can download it here:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Have you not noticed skipping with mp3 playback and lag in games? Do you have a Rev A or Rev B card?

[AlexRD]

You sir unfortunately have a defective nVidia card on your Asus G2S just like me. You have a 8600M Rev _A_ . There are 18 million of these cards on the market and they are all officially defective. nVidia announced replacement cards (rev :) in December and a few companies such as Dell and Apple have addressed the issue - there was a class action lawsuit against nVidia so they had no choice. Asus on the other hand has been refusing to fix my machine - even with the no questions asked replacement. I RMA'd my laptop a few months ago and they actually gave me a card that's even worse than the first one I had. They initially claimed they had to test the new cards before providing them to their clients. Now they claim they've never heard of it. I loved Asus - I now think they're one of the worst manufacturers and I generally tell my friends to avoid them like the plague. I must have bought at least a dozen Asus boxes over the years but the treatment I've had with my G2S which I've owned for nearly two years now is ridiculous. My G2S has NEVER worked properly. It's simple. Run a DPC latency checker. If you're getting interrupts in the 1000ms or more range, you can't play games or listen to mp3s without hickups or screen lag. Gaming laptop my arse. I wonder if they ever tested them with real games or even noticed the screen lag.

BTW, if the heating issue is the only problem, there's a tutorial online showing how to remove a few stickers that are BLOCKING fans in your G2S. More Asus idiocy. It greatly improved the heating problem on mine. My problem has nothing to do with heat. It has to do with the fact that the damn GPUs don't even work!

This is exactly what i think of my G2S. Is now Ridiculous. I bought it thinking it would run games on high settings for like 2 years... I loved asus, i thought they were the best manufacturer. Turns out, they're #$%^&*(.

Could you give me the link for the online tutorial to remove stickers?

Thanks.

@AlexRD:

Could you post a screen shot of a DPC latency check on your machine? You can download it here:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Have you not noticed skipping with mp3 playback and lag in games? Do you have a Rev A or Rev B card?

Ok, i downloaded it and they say :

"Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use Device Manager and disable/re-enable various devices, one at a time. Try network and W-LAN adapters, modems, internal sound devices, USB host controllers, etc."

-It oscilates between 500-1000.

I always have lag in games. Even in FLASH Applications.And also sometimes missing MP3s playback.

Thanks,

Alex.

How can i know if mine is Rev A or B?

[AlexRD]

I did as SebastianoSmith said.

And i Undervolted my CPU for a Cooler State. Still going to see how many C it dropped.

But now, what else can i do to reduce heat?

[Guest Alex]

So?

[Guest Wredhyn]

So?

Hiya, sorry - was away.

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do except call Asus support and beg them to replace your graphics card with a rev B - which also means they need to replace your motherboard because they're soldered on. I've spent months trying to fix my G2S and I'm a hardcore user. I've tried every flavor of Windows. I've tried enabling/disabling every driver to no avail. Tried about 30 odd driver versions from laptopvideo2go. I even RMA'd it a few months ago begging for the new card but didn't get it. Unfortunately, the problem is hardware based and nothing you can do with software will help. Lots of users don't even realize that the problem isn't really about overheating. It's about HUGE DPC latency and all the ridiculous problems that causes for games, video, and audio playback. Frankly, it makes the machine nearly useless for everything except word processing. I can't listen to music on this machine and I'm a professional musician. I imagine you are going through the same problems.

Removing the stickers did help though. I can't find the actual step by step tutorial but it was based on this thread at Asus:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?board_id=3&model=G2S&id=20080617040454828&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

That will fix the heating issues but you still won't be able to play games etc.

I'm going back to the shop where I bought it. The warranty is supposed to be a no questions asked replacement policy. At this point, the laptop is a lemon and I need a real machine. They've lost a good customer and a whole bunch of people I would have recommended.

Good luck to you.

[Guest Alex]

Hiya, sorry - was away.

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do except call Asus support and beg them to replace your graphics card with a rev B - which also means they need to replace your motherboard because they're soldered on. I've spent months trying to fix my G2S and I'm a hardcore user. I've tried every flavor of Windows. I've tried enabling/disabling every driver to no avail. Tried about 30 odd driver versions from laptopvideo2go. I even RMA'd it a few months ago begging for the new card but didn't get it. Unfortunately, the problem is hardware based and nothing you can do with software will help. Lots of users don't even realize that the problem isn't really about overheating. It's about HUGE DPC latency and all the ridiculous problems that causes for games, video, and audio playback. Frankly, it makes the machine nearly useless for everything except word processing. I can't listen to music on this machine and I'm a professional musician. I imagine you are going through the same problems.

Removing the stickers did help though. I can't find the actual step by step tutorial but it was based on this thread at Asus:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?board_id=3&model=G2S&id=20080617040454828&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

That will fix the heating issues but you still won't be able to play games etc.

I'm going back to the shop where I bought it. The warranty is supposed to be a no questions asked replacement policy. At this point, the laptop is a lemon and I need a real machine. They've lost a good customer and a whole bunch of people I would have recommended.

Good luck to you.

Ok, so i will try this tutorial

I was hoping we could chat, you know to share some tweaks :).

My hotmail is Alex_Deimling@Hotmail.com

And my Gmail is AlexDeimling@Gmail.com

Send me an E-Mail on one of them, so i can add you.

Thanks,

Alex.

[Guest Wredhyn]

I found the original thread that had this topic on the Asus support site:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20080712020031453&board_id=3&model=G1S&page=7&count=66

And I was wrong about the revision. I think we're looking for "A3".

A little update on my side: I got my G2S back from an RMA about 3 months ago and today it got fried again. As I mentionned, they simply replaced my old MoBo and card with a new one with the same damn GPU. I've reluctantly called to RMA it again. I explained that this time, they better do a proper DPC latency test before sending it back. If I get the same machine back a third time, it'll be time to file an official complaint. I'll keep you posted. Seems every other manufacturer from Apple to Dell to HP are adressing the issue properly. When I talk to Asus support it sounds like I'm talking way over their heads. According to an article published a year ago, ALL the cards are defective:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/10/all-nvidia-8400m-8600m-chips-faulty/

And now I'm trying to find the official announcement about the replacements...