[daeemann]

I'm having some problems with my HP Pavilion dv5-1116us laptop. It used to overheat so much that the keyboard would get hot. Then it began going into hibernate mode when it would heat up too much.

I took the laptop apart and applied thermal paste on the cpu and northbridge. Now the laptop no longer seems to get as hot, but it still shuts down. Now, instead of going into hibernate mode, it just shuts off. This is happening even though the laptop is no longer heating up as much. It still heats up, about 60deg C, and it shuts down at about 70deg C. Before, it would rise to about 90deg C and would not shut off until it reached 100deg C and even then it would first go into hibernate mode.

I'm wondering if part of the problem is because certain areas of the heat sink used thermal pads instead of the thermal compound. I threw away the pads because you're supposed to replace each time you remove the heat sink. I applied thermal paste instead, but their might be too large of a gap and may not be making contact? You can't even buy thermal pads at the store and the workers there have never heard of them. I did see you can order them online, but there's mixed reviews about them.

Does anyone have suggestions?


As long as I change my mobile settings to balanced power and don't watch many videos online, I'm ok.
But today, I was going to install a fresh copy of windows, and the computer shuts down when it's loading off the dvd. So I can't even do that.

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Sorry to say HP & Compaq branded laptops have a bad reputation for overheating, which over time causes some internal components to fail.
When that happens, no amount of improved cooling is going to bring those components back to life.

[phillipcorcoran]

Sorry to say HP & Compaq branded laptops have a bad reputation for overheating, which over time causes some internal components to fail.
When that happens, no amount of improved cooling is going to bring those components back to life.

[Digerati]

Thermal pastes are generally superior to pads. Though at any rate, even the best paste only provides a few degrees advantage over pads. Why do you say there may be too big of a gap? Note the purpose of TIM (thermal interface material) is to fill the microscopic pits and valleys in the mating surfaces. TIM pushes any trapped air out of those imperfections. Air, of course, insulates and we want conduction. But, any extra TIM is too much, gets in the way, and is counterproductive to the heat transfer process. The best heat conduction occurs with direct metal-to-metal contact. So you want as thin of layer of TIM as possible, while still providing full coverage.

Note that in spite of what notebook maker's marketing departments would have us believe, there is no such thing as a good notebook game machine. The compact nature of notebooks just does not provide for adequate cooling for gaming. Even full size towers that support multiple large case fans are challenged to keep PC game machines cool. At least with PCs, you can open the side and clean out the heat trapping dust. There is no way most normal users can thoroughly clean the notebook interior. So, if gaming, buy/build a PC.

Besides keeping the vents, bays and cavities clean of dust, your only alternative may be to buy a decent Notebook Cooling Pad w/ext. power supply.

Reinstalling Windows is not a good idea. That rarely fixes hardware issues. And it will wipe out all your security defenses, your drivers, and any driver updates since the initial install. And most importantly, it will put you months, or even years behind in security updates.

[SpywareDr]

100°C/212°F is hot enough to boil water, And start melting computer components!

Melted computer components are not repairable and must be replaced.

[daeemann]

Thanks for the info. The reason I say "gap" is because of the way the motherboard was designed. The cpu is set at a higher level on the motherboard than the northbridge. The graphics memory is also covered by the heatsink. When I first removed the fan/heatsink combo from the motherboard there were thermal pads on those. Even the instructions from hp for my particular model say that only the cpu has thermal paste, and everything else uses thermal pads. Since thermal pads are not very reliable and you can only find them online, I used thermal paste instead. It brought down the temperature from 90deg C to 40deg C. However, the machine now shuts off even at 70deg C. I used to connect my laptop to my tv through a hdmi cable and watch netflix movies. I can no longer do that. I did buy one of those thermal pad coolers that go underneath the laptop. I also switched my mobile power from performance to balanced and I changed the cpu usage from 100% to 99%. I cleaned the fan with compressed air. But now I'm wondering whether I should have taken the fan apart to make sure it was thorougly cleaned.

I've already taken my laptop apart about 3 times, and it takes a while to take apart, so it sucks that I have to keep doing it.

I want to reformat the drive so I can just have a clean installation of Windows without all of the HP stuff.

Yesterday was a really hot day, so hopefully I might be able to do it today, since it's still cool.

Everything is working fine still, at least I'm confident nothing has been damaged, yet. I have heard that a lot of times the video starts to go first because theres so much heat on the motherboard, that the lead-free solder on the chips start to melt, and sometimes the best option is to reball using lead-based soler. But if not done right, it destroys the entire motherboard, and it still wouldn't fix a heating issue.

So as long as everything still works I'm ok. I'm just annoyed by the overheating.

[Digerati]

Whoever told you the solder starts to melt is either stupid, or jerking you around. Solder used in electronics, even cheap electronics, has a melting point of at least 180°C. And most lead-free solder has a melting point considerably higher than lead based.

Note that thermal pads are very reliable - they just are not quite as efficient. Using a good paste over a pad typically only gives you an extra 5°C or so. As long as the cured bond is not broken, your fans work, and you are not overclocking, pads are fine for most users. And while pad are not as difficult to find as you imply (I've seen them at Best Buy and Radio Shack), it just make sense to use paste if you have to replace the TIM anyway.

It brought down the temperature from 90deg C to 40deg C.

No way did just replacing the TIM cause a 50°C (122°F) drop in temperatures. If you obtained those results, it is because something else was wrong and unplugging/plugging or removing and replacing the fan and/or heatsink in the process of applying a new layer of TIM corrected it.

Note sure what you mean by taking the fan apart. But the bearing are sealed so don't attempt to do anything with them.

[daeemann]

When I said take apart the fan, I meant the outercasing of the fan. I blew compressed air into the fan from the outerscasing, while holding the fans to make sure they don't move. But I'm wondering if the inside of the fan may still have dust stuck in it.

Yes, it brought the temperature considerably down. When I removed the heat sink, there was so much old thermal paste melted around the cpu. My guess is HP used a very cheap thermal paste for it. It was so bad, it took me over an hour to remove all of it. I had to be careful not to scratch anything so I just had to keep carefully rubbing it w/ qtips and 91% isopropyl alcohol. There were large dry chunks of the paste around the cpu. So maybe that's what caused the high temperature.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. The laptop is at least 2 years old. Maybe HP only designed the motherboard to last 2 years, especially if it's been overheating this bad. It's unfortunate. I've heard bad things about dell and how expensive they are, so I decided to go w/ hp this time. I have a dell laptop that I bought in 2000, and it still works, and I never had this type of issue even though it was a replacement desktop laptop that are known for heating up. Weird, that this HP is only 2 years old and it's already giving me problems, whereas my Dell laptop still works fine.

[daeemann]

I decided I'm not going to try reinstalling windows. I can use it ok right now as long as I keep lower settings on it. The computer still shuts down if I run the windows installer from overheating. So I'll just use add/remove in control panel to remove anything I don't want, and the disk defragmentor program to improve speed on it.

thanks for your help. I guess there is no real solution other than these computers overheat and over time they start to fail.

[Digerati]

Notebooks do get hot when taxed and all electronics wears out over time. And you hear horror stories about all the brands.

[daeemann]

Update:

I fixed my overheating problem, in which my laptop would shut down. I could load up windows with mobile balanced settings, but I could not load off a boot disk, like windows installation disk. My computer would shutdown. I also could not play netflix movies anymore.


The problem was that when I took the laptop apart and replaced thermal paste on the cpu, I also removed the thermal pads from the heat sink and replaced using thermal paste. Unfortunately, with the design of the heatsink and the system board using thermal paste in those sections leaves a gap, so it does nothing.

Do not replace the thermal pads with thermal paste. In my particular model, you do use thermal paste on the cpu but not on the gpu, which is indicated in the hp manual. Replacing the pad with thermal paste on the gpu will lead to loss of contact with the heatsink.

In the Los Angeles area, it is difficult to find a store that sells any thermal pads. Fry's didn't have any in stock and the workers didn't even know what it was. Instead I order a 1/4 sized sheet of thermal pad from http://www.frozencpu...?tl=g8c487s1289

I applied on the appropriate places and only used thermal paste on the cpu.

My computer no longer overheats and I can watch movies on it again.

[Rascle53]

i have 2 hp's neither cooled very well when i got them,both were used. i got lucky, i got a can of compressed air,blew out the fans and porst,make sure there was good air flow ,, problem was solved,,however i did purchase one of thos laptop cooling laptop pads, it helps out more than one would think

[Roamin]

I wanna share my experience with my dv5-1124ca, i've had for nearly 3 years now. Since the day i got it, it always been at least warm, and the fan pretty noisy. A few days ago, i just couldn't take it anymore, it had gotten to a point where the fan noise was driving me crazy, the 84 degrees idling temperature killed 2 of my batteries, figured i'd stop being lazy, and open it up. The best decision i took concerning this laptop. First things first, the fan. I really suggest, to anyone who even hears his fan, to open up your laptop and get to the fan. On my model (like most) , the cpu fan is directly assembled with the heat sink. First remove the heat sink, then remove the 3 screws from the fan assembly to get to the fins of the exhaust, and the blades. The fan is a silent magnetic (no bearings) type. The blade assembly can be easily pulled, cleaned inside (i used q-tips and alcohol), Blew the dust of the wire coils, and thoroughly clean the fan assembly. (Mine was super bad, the whole exhaust was covered with a 3-4 mm thick layer of dust, that had started to hardened due to heat) Now I know a lot of people suggest using compressed air, but there is no better result than opening the fan completely. Compressed air is good, but is a step that should be used periodically, long before you start having heat issues, because the amount of dust currently inside your 2-3 old laptop, just wont come out with compressed air.

I also removed the older, less effective thermal paste, and applied better quality. Unlike the previous poster, this paste was easily removed in about 1 minute, with just a q-tip, no alcohol.

The results are simply amazing, feels like i have a brand new laptop. I also use K10stat now, to lower the cpu voltage. I lowered the voltage only by 0.05 Volts, and gained 2-3 degree cooler, but i don't think it's such a necessity anymore. Anyways, now my laptop idles at 45-46 degrees, and i cannot hear the fan AT ALL ! The fan use to emit a very high pitch noise, now even when it runs full speed (when i turn on the laptop, the fan always goes full speed for 2 seconds or so) it sounds great. The keyboard is cool, the airflow is great. I was never able to use this laptop on my lap for more than 10 minutes, now i can use it for as long as i want.

I really wish i had gotten off my lazy [bleep] sooner, and clean the fan and change the paste, would of saved my batteries. Shame HP cheaps out on thermal insulation, and i wonder why they don't make the entire fan assembly accessible from outside...