Samsung laptop randomly shuts down

Question

I have a Samsung R560 laptop that is overheating, and shutting itself down under load consistently.

Here are my load/idle temps from Speedfan:

Ignore "Temp1 and Temp2", whatever sensors they are, they're always random.

The load temperature is after just 5 minutes of playing Fallout 3 - another 5 minutes and it (the GPU - 9600M GS) consistently breaches the mid 90's then shuts down, so it's hard to get a good picture of it.

I'm looking for a solution or some way to decrease these temperatures, because they seem far too high even when idle.

I've tried:

• Opening up the case and clearing all dust with compressed air
• Updating the drivers for my graphics card
• Using a notebook cooler

I don't want to:

• Undervolt / underclock (defeats the point of having a more expensive card)
• Use lower power / performance settings (again, I might as well have bought something cheaper)

Is there anything else I can try (software or inexpensive hardware) that can help me fix this?

Has anybody had a Samsung laptop and knows if this can be sorted under my warranty, and the turnaround time of sending it off (UK?)(it has always ran hotter than it should, but now at 6 months old is getting hot enough to power off)

Solution 1

Have you tried looking at SpeedFan? I use that on my desktop and it gives different internal temps

Solution 2

You could try applying a little more thermal paste to the processor, but I wouldn't recommend it, and it might just make things worse, to say nothing of voiding the warranty.

Edit: As Hyperslug mentions, it could be thermal adhesive, which will pose much more of a problem in that it can be somewhat difficult to remove.

Your best bet would be to call up the company who issued it and have it returned under warranty. Ask them to replace it first, but if the next one behaves in the same fashion, ask for a refund.

Solution 3

Sorry to say this and whilst not a technical answer, it will resolve the problem:

Take it back, it is defective. I have used a few Samsung laptops and they are very reliable. This is abnormal behaviour and you shouldn't need to buy anything additional to make it work and run normally.

Comments

[Dmatig]

Thanks! Does the job perfectly, now i know for sure it's an overheating dealio and not something else. The little flame pictures scare me..

[Tim Williscroft]

For people who have n owarranty left/are more confident with electonics, remove the CPU, remove all the thermal tranasfer paste form CPU and heatsink using dry, lint free, ESD safe cloth, then put fresh paste on cpu, and reinstall heatsink. Will fix desktops with similar instability problems too.

[EvilChookie]

True, but you do want to be careful - too much will make the problem worse, and not enough will also make the problem worse.

[Dmatig]

I'm more worried about the GPU than the CPU, are they similarly re-pasteable? I've only ever done this with CPU's on tower-case pc's, can this be easily done with a laptop GPU heatsink/fan? I don't wanna go try rip it off only to find it's unremoveable.

[hyperslug]

It might also be a thermal adhesive instead of paste. I swore I was going to crack the CPU the last time I pried one of those off.

[Brian Knoblauch]

Don't blindly follow what it reports though. Some machines seem to have sensors that return garbage. Got a machine here that reports very high RAM temps all the time, but they're actually cool.

[EvilChookie]

That's a very good point.

[C2940680]

Poor assembling of your laptop during manufacturing. The Thermal compound has dried up. Rather than trying to put thermal compound (Arctic Silver 5) yourself ina laptop, return the product as defective. However, if oyu want to put thermal compound yourself, you can do it. BUT, you should also re-install your operating system and make sure the hard drive remains constantly defragmented if over used. You can Task Schedule hard drive check every 15 days (CHKDSK /F C:) to make sure large file reading and writing do not corrupt the hard drive sectors.

[lyrica]

Going out on a limb, I'm guessing you followed this methodology, hence why you haven't been seen since. That being said, how are your temps? ;)