What's new
By:
Filters
Roleplay UK

Join the UK's biggest roleplay community on FiveM and experience endless new roleplay opportunities!

Laptop getting warm while playing

Zeebaah

Zeebaah

Active member
Heya, im trying to figure out why my computer is overheating while playing arma3.

As far as i can read by specs it should be more than enough, but ive been getting temperatures around 96 celcius

My mate got a laptop by a diffrent brand. but specs are the same. he plays at ultra, while i do low. 

I play on an Dell XPS 15 9550
http://www.dell.com/en-us/member/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-laptop

specs:

XPS 15 (9550) 1 10.036,56 10.036,56 SR

6th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ Quad Core (6M Cache, up to 3.5 GHz) 1 SR

16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Memory 1 SR

Dell 84 WHr 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery 1 SR

NVIDIA GTX960M 2GB DDR5

 
If you have the exact same specs then it might be the cooling... try replacing your fans and see if the problem persists...

 
It is most likely because you are on a laptop which dosen't have good enough cooling.

A good way to make your laptop run cooler is buy buying one of these -

91xFdjolZSL._SL1500_.jpg

 
A laptop cooler would most likely not solve your issue, it would help but not so much that you would even notice it when playing games. From what I can see from the link of the laptop you posted is that it is very thin most likely meaning the cooling inside is quite poor. Being  a laptop as well dust build up is much harder to control the best thing i could recommend is if you feel comfortable to open up the laptop and try clearing any dust you can see and then also when using it try and raise the back of the laptop about 2cm off the surface so that the heat has more area to leave into rather than directly onto a flat surface like a desk. These solutions might not make a huge difference but you need to remember you are using a laptop and temperatures while gaming can get extremely high. 90 degrees is also the cut off point for most nvidia GPUS to protect them from damage so i would highly recommend if it goes over 90 you stop playing and allow it to cool or you could damage your laptop.

 
Your GPU should throttle its self down at 92 or so, I wouldn't worry about it (M GPU's less to worry about temps than desktop grade)

Are you possibly running arma in higher than 1080p? Considering your laptop supports higher resolutions, this will massively increase temperatures and reduce fps

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Khal said:
Your GPU should throttle its self down at 92 or so, I wouldn't worry about it (M GPU's less to worry about temps than desktop grade)

Are you possibly running arma in higher than 1080p? Considering your laptop supports higher resolutions, this will massively increase temperatures and reduce fps
Click to expand...
Ive changed the resolution already from 1920x1080 to 1280x720. before that my screen went black after 10mins and came back few mins later while the computer had cooled down a bit.

Cloud Strife said:
A laptop cooler would most likely not solve your issue, it would help but not so much that you would even notice it when playing games. From what I can see from the link of the laptop you posted is that it is very thin most likely meaning the cooling inside is quite poor. Being  a laptop as well dust build up is much harder to control the best thing i could recommend is if you feel comfortable to open up the laptop and try clearing any dust you can see and then also when using it try and raise the back of the laptop about 2cm off the surface so that the heat has more area to leave into rather than directly onto a flat surface like a desk. These solutions might not make a huge difference but you need to remember you are using a laptop and temperatures while gaming can get extremely high. 90 degrees is also the cut off point for most nvidia GPUS to protect them from damage so i would highly recommend if it goes over 90 you stop playing and allow it to cool or you could damage your laptop.
Click to expand...
the thinness is what im afriad of causing it also. when i got this computer i didnt really play any games i just used it to write small programs and websites. and then it looked great being thin. but i would had guessed it should be able to play arma without overheating when it outpowers the requirements. 

Ive also been in contact with dell today, they asked me to run a diagnostic and got passed all tests, how ever it did get up to 86 celcius and the support didnt like that, so now im waiting for dell tech team to contact me and hear what they think

 
Your screen going black is the dell automated system they put in to protect the laptop from further damage, if your laptop didn't get this hot before when playing games then I would say something is wrong but if you've just recently started playing and these are the temps you've always seen then it's probably best you don't play games for long periods of time on it. The laptop itself isn't really a gaming laptop so that itself will be the first issue, I know the specs in it are within the recommended for the game but the cooling they have put in the laptop won't be sufficient, that's why most gaming laptops you see are quite thick and heavy as the try and get in bigger coolers and fans to keep good airflow. 

Try and check around dell forums for other people who have the same laptop and see what they do about playing games, i can tell you now dell support isn't the greatest and will most likely give you answers that you could just google. If when they get back to you if they ask you to send your laptop in to them make sure it is still under warranty as they will charge you if not and also create a full system back up as they may change settings or even replace the hard drive.

If they don't help or you can't find anymore information let us know and I'll try and do what i can

 
Cloud Strife said:
Your screen going black is the dell automated system they put in to protect the laptop from further damage, if your laptop didn't get this hot before when playing games then I would say something is wrong but if you've just recently started playing and these are the temps you've always seen then it's probably best you don't play games for long periods of time on it. The laptop itself isn't really a gaming laptop so that itself will be the first issue, I know the specs in it are within the recommended for the game but the cooling they have put in the laptop won't be sufficient, that's why most gaming laptops you see are quite thick and heavy as the try and get in bigger coolers and fans to keep good airflow. 

Try and check around dell forums for other people who have the same laptop and see what they do about playing games, i can tell you now dell support isn't the greatest and will most likely give you answers that you could just google. If when they get back to you if they ask you to send your laptop in to them make sure it is still under warranty as they will charge you if not and also create a full system back up as they may change settings or even replace the hard drive.

If they don't help or you can't find anymore information let us know and I'll try and do what i can
Click to expand...
Dell support didnt help at all no. how ever ive disabled the CPU boost then my computer runs at 60 celcius. so now im slowly testing with the cpu boost on, but slowly doing undervolting my cpu trying to get my temperature around 75~ without getting BSOD

 
I game (and simultaneously stream) Arma 3 on a HP Elitebook, and I used to have serious issues with gaming/overheating but I fixed the issues:

Firstly I had a stock HP Elitebook upgraded (GPU and CPU).... I think this was potentially the root of the cause (poor thermal paste).

After warranty had finished, and several years of gaming/overheating/kicking out HOT air of the vent, I narrowed it down to a couple of things.

Firstly if the fan gets blocked this will SERIOUSLY affect cooling, so if possible get a can of compressed air (from poundland) and spray the shit out of the cooling vents.

If you can, I would also suggest taking it apart (should be plenty of YT videos on this) and physically remove all dust that is clogging the fan, tubes and intake/outtake vents.

THEN if you are still getting an issue, buy GOOD thermal paste and reapply to CPU & GPU. I got some through work which was the highest W / mK (8 W/mK or higher ideally).

Apply this on the clean thermal pads as instructed, and you should see a noticeable cooling effect.

I also have a large USB fan cooler which I think helps (bought when I had the initial problems, before I re-thermal pasted, but even now it helps).

Oh and make sure you dont do what I did and play on a bed, which blocked the bottom air intake! (woops)

The problem with laptops is they are so compact, you need to make sure the cooling is working as best it can.   Hopefully you can sort this out. :)

 
James_W12345 said:
I game (and simultaneously stream) Arma 3 on a HP Elitebook, and I used to have serious issues with gaming/overheating but I fixed the issues:

Firstly I had a stock HP Elitebook upgraded (GPU and CPU).... I think this was potentially the root of the cause (poor thermal paste).

After warranty had finished, and several years of gaming/overheating/kicking out HOT air of the vent, I narrowed it down to a couple of things.

Firstly if the fan gets blocked this will SERIOUSLY affect cooling, so if possible get a can of compressed air (from poundland) and spray the shit out of the cooling vents.

If you can, I would also suggest taking it apart (should be plenty of YT videos on this) and physically remove all dust that is clogging the fan, tubes and intake/outtake vents.

THEN if you are still getting an issue, buy GOOD thermal paste and reapply to CPU & GPU. I got some through work which was the highest W / mK (8 W/mK or higher ideally).

Apply this on the clean thermal pads as instructed, and you should see a noticeable cooling effect.

I also have a large USB fan cooler which I think helps (bought when I had the initial problems, before I re-thermal pasted, but even now it helps).

Oh and make sure you dont do what I did and play on a bed, which blocked the bottom air intake! (woops)

The problem with laptops is they are so compact, you need to make sure the cooling is working as best it can.   Hopefully you can sort this out. :)
Click to expand...
I play in bed, but I got an flat tray where I place the laptop at, it's so thin so it only got intakes at the bottom so I never really had the option not to buy something. If not for the cooling then at least for all the cat hair I don't want into my system that my two cats leaves for me 😉

 
Dont wory...absolutely normal...as for the cooler...I actually have the exact one in the picture...cooler master x3 and I can tell you that it helps but its loud and you cant use your mic ingame anymore....

 
To put it simply, laptops are not ment for gaming, it is a small tiny box of heat that gets even more overheated when playing intensive games. Laptops are shit, get a pc pal, less money, more airflow, 

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top