RE: GT780DXR CPU overheating problem. (FPS DROPS) (FIXED!)
« Reply #4 on: 14-October-12, 16:36:57 »
I'm very happy to report that the entire problem has been solved!
When I went to the shop where I bought my laptop they didn't want to help me because they wanted me to let MSI pickup&return fix the issue due to warranty.
I didn't want to wait for a long time to get my laptop for such a small and easy repair because I need my laptop every day, so I went ahead to fix it myself.
I used to build PC's for my profession so I knew what I was doing.
When I opened the backplate I noticed a slight build up of dust on both radiators from the heatsinks, in order to clean it properly I removed the heatsinks from the GPU and CPU.
I noticed that the original cooling pad of the CPU was not correctly covering the entire CPU and was smudged a bit over the edges of the core. I cleaned the CPU and GPU and both heatsinks up, re-pasted them with some proper thermal paste and re-assembled the laptop.
With the new thermal paste and cleaned heatsink radiators I now get very satisfying results.
CPU maximum temperatures @ 21ºc room temp with Turbo Boost and Cooler Boost:
Idle | small tasks | heavy tasks & gaming
Before: 65ºc | 79ºc | 101ºc
After: 48ºc | 62ºc | 85ºc
GPU maximum temperature @ 21ºc room temp with Cooler boost and Turbo Boost @ 700/1400/1700 overclock:
Idle | Heavy load & gaming
Before: 52ºc | 86ºc
After: 41ºc | 70ºc
As you can see the re-application of thermal paste has drastically improved my temperatures and the FPS drop problem in Battlefield 3 has been solved.
If anyone reading this is also experiencing FPS drops, check your CPU and GPU temperatures with CPUID Hardware Monitor:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
When your CPU temperatures go over 85-90ºc you might have the same problem as I have and this is probably the solution IF you have tried everything else without success.
Do not try to fix this yourself if you don't know 100% what you're doing!