Post by Schamæl on Jan 7, 2010 9:23:33 GMT
Hi all,
Just thought I'd share this because it's awesome and stopped me taking everything apart for nothing lol.
I use a Toshiba Satellite A300D-15B, and have been using it for just over a year now. Running Vista Home Premium SP2 32-bit, got 4Gb of DDR2 RAM, and using an AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80 CPU @ 2.1GHz. So it's not exactly a supercomputer, but good as laptops go.
Recently, when trying to play Halo 2, it would get very hot and black out. Cool it down, and it would turn back on again. Those in the know will diagnose this immediately as oveheating.
Toshibas are notorious for this, their cooling vents aren't that good at getting the crap out of the CPU's heatsink apparently. I had a look and it was all ok. I think it's because I hoover the vents a lot. DO THAT. It'll live longer and be happier.
Also I don't keep it covered, use on a hard flat surface, etc etc.
That wasn't enough.
I got a cheap laptop cooling 3-fan tray thingummy from eBay. Before that, it usually ran at around 90C! And that's only like word processing (lovely essays...
) WLM, Facebook and Songbird. About 15-20% CPU usage on average, using 1.35Gb of the RAM, and hardly touching the Swapfile @ a steady 344MB. That aside, it was getting ridiculous.
The fan cooled it down a few degrees. Now anything between 80 and 90 was about right. It fluctuated a lot, but still.
Then, I found out about Vista's power plan problems. (sigh, Microsoft. Sigh...)
Try this:
Go to your power options and select Balanced instead of High Performance. Use it for a while.
That's it!
If you look in the Power Settings --> Change Advanced Settings (I have to customise everything I can, so that was one of the first things I did) you notice that while it is the same on battery, looking in Processor power management --> Minimum/Maximum processor state, the maximum is 100% on battery and plugged in, in High Performance AND in Balanced. So what's the difference you may ask? This:
Look at Minimum processor state, and compare. In Balanced it is 5% plugged in and on battery. In High Performance when plugged it the CPU's MINIMUM STATE is 100%! That's just ridiculous!
Apparently using Balanced does not affect performance noticeably at all. So far it hasn't been at all noticeable. Once I've finished my essay I'll try Halo 2 on it, and report back...
Just thought I'd share this because it's awesome and stopped me taking everything apart for nothing lol.
I use a Toshiba Satellite A300D-15B, and have been using it for just over a year now. Running Vista Home Premium SP2 32-bit, got 4Gb of DDR2 RAM, and using an AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80 CPU @ 2.1GHz. So it's not exactly a supercomputer, but good as laptops go.
Recently, when trying to play Halo 2, it would get very hot and black out. Cool it down, and it would turn back on again. Those in the know will diagnose this immediately as oveheating.
Toshibas are notorious for this, their cooling vents aren't that good at getting the crap out of the CPU's heatsink apparently. I had a look and it was all ok. I think it's because I hoover the vents a lot. DO THAT. It'll live longer and be happier.
Also I don't keep it covered, use on a hard flat surface, etc etc.
That wasn't enough.
I got a cheap laptop cooling 3-fan tray thingummy from eBay. Before that, it usually ran at around 90C! And that's only like word processing (lovely essays...
) WLM, Facebook and Songbird. About 15-20% CPU usage on average, using 1.35Gb of the RAM, and hardly touching the Swapfile @ a steady 344MB. That aside, it was getting ridiculous.The fan cooled it down a few degrees. Now anything between 80 and 90 was about right. It fluctuated a lot, but still.
Then, I found out about Vista's power plan problems. (sigh, Microsoft. Sigh...)
Try this:
Go to your power options and select Balanced instead of High Performance. Use it for a while.
That's it!
If you look in the Power Settings --> Change Advanced Settings (I have to customise everything I can, so that was one of the first things I did) you notice that while it is the same on battery, looking in Processor power management --> Minimum/Maximum processor state, the maximum is 100% on battery and plugged in, in High Performance AND in Balanced. So what's the difference you may ask? This:
Look at Minimum processor state, and compare. In Balanced it is 5% plugged in and on battery. In High Performance when plugged it the CPU's MINIMUM STATE is 100%! That's just ridiculous!
Apparently using Balanced does not affect performance noticeably at all. So far it hasn't been at all noticeable. Once I've finished my essay I'll try Halo 2 on it, and report back...