HP Pavillion TX 2000 . Please some advices

[dreamriser]

Hy to all,

I just got back my tx 2000 from repair cause of over heating .

So now that it's working again , WHAT should i do so it doesn't happen again ?

any software or special setup to do ?

Please tell me how can i manage the heat on my laptop so it doesn't fry again .

Thank you

[Daniel_Potyrala]

Hi,

It's always good to invest in cooling pad.

If You want to know how to find the best cooler for Your notebook then check below guide:

Notebook Coolers : A Buyers Guide

There are HP articles with some great tips about this problem too:

Reducing Heat and Fan Noise by Cleaning Air Vents

Fan Runs Constantly, the PC Operates Slower than Expected and Generates Heat

Tips for Using, Carrying, and Protecting your Notebook

If this reply gives correct answer on Your question please mark this thread as solved by clicking the "Accept as Solution" button.

[Slyppry]

You can try searching for a program called Speedfan. It will run on both 32bit and 64bit platforms and will tell you if your processors are running hot. Keep an eye on it and this might help! Also, keep a can of compressed air handy and use it whenever you think you might need it. Just always remember... shut down your pc before using!!! Dont Forget! Forgetting could cost you lots of heartache and damage!

Good luck!

-John

[Daniel_Potyrala]

---

Slyppry wrote:

You can try searching for a program called Speedfan. It will run on both 32bit and 64bit platforms and will tell you if your processors are running hot.

---

I recommend HWMonitor

.

[pcneophyte]

I was also the victim of tx2000, even though I had a 3-year warranty and the warranty is not expired until sometime late in 2011. Unfortunately, I bought the tx 2017 au in Taiwan and can't claim warranty here in USA. In addition to BSD (black screen of  Death), the tx also had a disappeared wireless and had trouble in starting up and restart.

There were three methods to fix the BSD, namely baking the mobo in the over at 400F for 10 minutes, heating using a lamp or other heat source for several minutes (these two methods requiring disassembling the tx2000), and the towel method to self heat the mobo for one hour or until the notebook shut itself up due to heat.

I am a computer neophyte, never opened a computer before. Figured I have nothing to lose, I adopted two of the three methods mentioned above and got the BSD fixed. As soon as I booted into windows, I loaded the temp monitoring program, Mwmonitor and speedfan. I was stunned. The K8 AMD was running at 90s and Nvidia was running at 10c higher, meaning it was running at water boiling temp, just minutes after booted into windows. At that heat, the tx 2000 is doomed to get the BSD treatment, sooner or later.

Knowing that I had nothing to lose, I summoned all my courage and downloaded the manual from HP. It took me a good 7 hours to get the mobo and heat sink out. Once I checked the heat sink, I understood the famous ONE Red Penny solution. There was a gap between Nvidia chip and the heat sink. The ONE RED PENNY would fill that gap. So, I ordered the thermal paste from ARCTIC SILVER ( without silver, cause I did not want to short circuit it, knowing full that I would make a mess applying the paste onto CPU, GPU and the area formerly occupied by thermal pad)

Well, to make long story short, the repacked heat sink helped to reduce heat by circa 10c. The tx 2000 was running at high 80s and low 90s. Still high.

I looked around the world and found a program called RM clock. It was a program to undervolt, reducing volt fed into CPU And GPU, therefore, reducing heat produced by chips. It is a complicated process. Anyway, based on my experience, running vista, one might safely reduce volt by .1 to .2. That means, I gave volt 1.05 to multiplex 11 ( factory setting was 1.15 volt) and .95 volt to multiplex 4 (factory setting was 1.15). Well, RM clock program made a big difference. It reduced the temp by circa 15-20C. The tx 2000 was running at high 60s to high 70s. (the GPU would run at 10C higher)

Unsatisfied with the achievement, I decided to pull out the drill and drill holes directly under the heat sink to increase the air volume sucked up by the Fan. The reason I wanted to do that was I noticed while the fan was running at high speed, but not much air came out from the exhaust. So, I found the largest drill bit I could find (3/4) and drilled 6 holes under the heatsink (after that, you could see the penny) and numerous holes in the DRAM cover. ( Don't worry. The undercover was made from Aluminimum, not plastic) Well, it made the difference. the fan was running at much lower speed ( less fan noise) while you could feel the heat coming out from the exhause. I guess it helped lower the temp by another 5-10C. The tx 2000 was running low 60s to low 70s. Anyway, under software load closing to 100@, the temp was never exceeding 80s. (warning: while the fan noise was reduced, the noise from Hard drive would increase from the opening holes)

Still unsatisfied, I decided to. get rid of vista and got a windows 7. Well, windows 7 did ameliorate  the start problem and get rid of the restart problem ( In windows 7, one simple choose to shutdown the computer and 7 would make note of the upgrade, ), but it was a mistake for the sense that RM clock seems to have trouble coordinating with windows 7. Even without the RM clock, it seems tx2000 was running cooler under windows 7 than under vista. Nevertheless, windows 7 still can't find the disappeared wireless connection. I am now fully convinced that the Motherboard was damaged due to the heat.

So, the lesson: If you are still running vista, you should definitely repack the heat sink in your tx2000, installed the RM clock software to undervolt, and if you dare, drill holes directly under the heat sink to increase the air volume sucked inside the tx 2000 to reduce the heat.

The total cost for the fix: Very little, one Penny for the RED PENNY, 6 dollar for the thermal paste and lots of grease to do the job. I guess it would only take the expert in HP less than 10 minutes to do the job ( one minute to apply heat gun to re-establish connection between GPU and Mobo, two minutes to install heat sink, another 7 minutes to disassemble and reassemble tx 2000)

I had high regard for HP over the past 3 decades. It was the mistake I committed when I bought the tx2000.

I hereby urge that HP take a courtesy recall to fix the BSD of TX 2000 series and restore the respect lost by thousands of hp fans. Obvious for me, I had no more pretext to buy HP computers, I might not even buy HP printers, though I love HP printers and having had used them for the past three decades. The cost for courtesy call will be little ( well, in most cases, HP does not need to replace the MOBO) compared to the ill will exposed by now disgruntled , formerly loyally customers.

[pcneophyte]

This is the follow up post.

I forgot to mention that I installed 4, 3/4 inches height silicone bump stop  leg to raise the tx2000 up so that air can be easily circulated in and out of the tx2000. ($2.99 for a total of 12 legs available at home depot in the kitchen cabinet section)

Following the install of windows 7, the RM clock had difficulty in working with the windows 7. I could disable the windows 7 power management, but once windows 7 is shut down and start up again, the windows 7 power control will resume and fight between them continue, resulting crash. Finally,  I gave up, being a computer neophyte and delete RM clock ( well, can't even uninstall it, weird?)

So, I went into the power management and choose the recommended setting and run the spy-bot program to see how hot it might get. The program was finished within 15 minutes. The maximum temp running the program was 88 C ( MOTHERBOARD AS WELL AS gpu), WHEN  the CPU was running at 100%.That was high. My goal was no more than 80c on the motherboard.

So, I tested with running CPU at 85%, 90% and 93% maximum, respectively. Finally, I found out that all those three setting will result no more than 80C on the motherboard. At last, I chose 93% setting and be done with it. The maximum temp under that setting was 77C, a temp that cannot melt the solder on the motherboard.

Compared with the notebook, Asus UL 50 running intel ULV, I acquired after the BSD of tx2000, the temp reached by tx2000 was really shocking. The minimun and maximum of tx2000, after all the efforts made to repack heat sink, drilling holes, raising the height, upgrading to 4GB DRAM and windows 7, was high 40s and 70s respectively. The minimum and maximum of Asus ul50 running intel Core 2 Dueo was 20s and 50s, respectively without doing anything.

Anyway, if you can spare additional hundreds bucks or so, it is highly recommended to let Vista die. Though I am no expert, running tx2000 under the maximum temp of 80S shall eschew the awful fate of BSD.

Sign off and good luck to you all. Just remember, next time when you have to buy a notebook, look out for a notebook with the longest  battery life (meaning the least hot). ( The asus ul50 I got could run for 10 hours) And I am sure you know which one to eschew at all cost.

[pcneophyte]

Finally, succeed in making windows 7 working with RM Clock.

So, I ran the same program (spybot) again under RM clock. The maximum temp was still 77C, but the program was finished within 10 minutes, instead of 15 minutes using windows 7 recommended power setting with the processor limited to 93%.

Note, the 77C was the maximum temp reached. The said temp could only be there for a very short amount of time, the core temp of AMD two cores would fluctuate widely between 60s and 70s, depending on the multiplex it was running. Now, the tx2000 was running quiet and cool.

Windows 7 comes with three default settings of power management: one saver, one recommended and one performance. If user did not choose one, then windows 7 would pick one: the recommended ( actually, it was similar to the RM clock, performance on demand)

To  avoid RM clock fighting with windows 7, one must create a new power plan and choose to execute that power plan. But be aware that one still need to tweek inside that plan: Go to the advanced setting, pick processor, then three items show up: minimum processor, the default was set at 5%, meaning if the processor was running below 5%, then windows 7 will do something to intervene. And, you don't want Windows to do anythiing to interfere with RM Clock. So, I set  the minimum to 1%, figuring there is no way processor would run below that. The maximum was set at 100%, leave that alone, so that windows will do nothing to interfere ( if you set, say, at 95%, and RM Clock would want to run at 100% per performance on demand, then fight will ensue and the system will likely crash). The third item is cooling, choose active ( meaning windows will first speed up fan to cool down, instead of slowing down the processor speed, which will interfere with RM clock).

Once you tame the windows 7 power plan scheme, then go to the RM clock and tick " integreate with the OS power plan" so that two can shake hand if there is a need to do so.

We are only interested in RM clock to undervolt the AMD K8 processor for the sole purpose of reducing the high heat. While RM clock can also manage other power management items, such as USB, display, but those items have very little to do with heat, more to do with power saving ( if you are on AC, then really no difference). I figure I will leave those alone and let windows 7 handle that.

Once windows 7 new power plan was created and RM clock was instructed to shanke hands with windows 7 in the event such need arise, then I have no problem running the test without suffering the fate of crash. The tx 2000 now was running very cool, the fan was not even triggered in the ordinary web surfing or low density job.  Under windows 7, the RM clock will help reduce circa 10C temperature ( with 1.0250v for 11 multiplex, and .95 volt for 4 multiplex) while under Vista, the value could be 20C. Definitely worth the efforts to learn how to use RM Clock to run on the HP TX 2000 on Vista ( Very Intensive Sum of Thermal Array) ,the hot of all hotter notebooks.

BE warned that I only run it for one day and the set up may prove not stable overtime. Anyway, this is just 2c opinion of a computer neophyte, you must investigate further, or you have yourself to blame.

[pcneophyte]

OK, This shall be my final post on this topic.

After circa 3 months worth of using RM clock, I must conclude that the simple setting to reduce the voltage is stable ( the voltage was reduced to 1.025 volt for the highest 3 multiples and .95 volt for the lowest 4 multiples, and .975 for the next lowest 4 multiples and finally 1 volt for the remaining multiples, a total of 11 multiples-excluding half multiples, indicating the amd turion x64 running at 2.2 GHZ). Under 100% CPU loading for extended period of time ( say, over 60 minutes for fast antivirus check up), the maximum temp never exceeded 80. In mundane operation, the CPU was running at 50s. much much cooler that the original setting from the HP.

There is another trick to lower the temp further. As I mentioned earlier, the bottom part of HP tx2000 is aluminium, pure aluminum. Pay attention to the heat sink which was almost touched to the bottom aluminum, especially the heat pipe. Since I drilled numerous holes at the bottom, I could clearly see the heat pipe. So, I put some thermal paste onto the pipe and connect the pipe to the aluminum case which makes the bottom of the aluminum another heat sink to help dissipate heat ( the first heat sink absorded heat from both CPU and GPU, the second heat sink,i.e., the bottom of the HP, used the first heat sink as the source  and help to dissipate the heat)

I still had great difficulty in starting the HP tx2000. On some lucky day, I might get it started on the 4th try. on some bad day, it could take over hundreds of try. It really sucks. But since I am using this as a training tool to educate myself about computer, so I kept playing around. One fine day, I noticed that the tx2000 would never boot up unless the light of wireless turned from amber to deep blue. As most  users of tx2000 experienced, the first thing to go was the wireless before the BSD. I found by tapping rapidly over the area of wireless ( on the right corner of the notebook) at the exact time when the light turned into blue, the notebook would boot up. Combing this technique with the hard reset, the notebook would boot up. And, yes, I could boot up the notebook for the past three months on a daily basis.

Still, I am not satisfied. So,  I disassembed the tx2000 and pull out the tiny part of the wireless ( a small part with a relatively long wire with both ends, one attached to the part, the other motherboard). Now, the light of the wireless would remain amber, never turned into blue after removing the parts. Once you push the power bottom and start the boot process, just tap rapidly at the general area of the wireless and the tx2000 would boot up. No, you won't get it boot up in the first try, but it won't take hundreds. I got it boot up in the 4th or 5th try.( I guess by removing the badly damaged wireless part, the BIOS had one less part to check and won't be hold up indefinitely waiting for response. Hei, I know nothing about the circuit, just my guess)

Once the tx2000 boot up, everything is running fine. I think the tx2000 was running faster than my intel core2 duo su7300, though the su7300 was running silent and extremely cool ( high at low50, no matter how much you throw at it, idle at 20s, ridiculously cool)

OK, that's the end of it. I got the HP tx2000 crap ( in a sense, HP failed to manage the heat), got my lesson and my fun at playing with it. And, if you read it, you are likely to be another unlucky owner of TX2000. Good luck and have fun playing around.

[pcneophyte]

At last, the hp-tx2000 made the trans-pacific trip (circa 7000 miles) and hit the HP  Taiwan for the warranty job in the nebulous early May 2011. HP replaced the  system board under the warranty.

Upon receiving the unit, I fired it up and everything worked! Wireless came back, booted into bios and then OS without any hesitation. Launched speedfan and it showed GPU running at 75C and CPU at 65C, well, kind of high at idle.

I was extremely reluctant to open the unit up, but the grinding noise of fan was really pushing me to the edge. Finally, I ordered a new fan from Hong Kong via ebay at a great cost and received the fan from Quodang province, Mainland China ( wow, talking about globenization!).

Equipped with the new fan, I opened the unit up. Not surprisingly, there was the thermal pad ( about 25mm thick) between the heat sink and the nvidia chip. It is worth noting that the nvidia chip was marked as made in 2009 (2009 version), which means the issue of faulted nvidia chip is eliminated in this new motherboard ( all defaulted nvidia chip was made before August 2008). The gap between the nvidia chip and the heat sink is quite large, so I decided to leave the thermal pad alone, but I put in a copper sheet, on top of the thermal pad, ( about 10mm thick which I can easily bend it into shape using my hand) about the size of 5 quarters ( or roughly 5 times the size of nvidia chip, about 2/3 of the copper sheet (almost the total size of the heat sink over both CPU and GPU) was bended over after the heat sink was installed. OK, try imagine that 1/3 of the copper sheet was directly on top of the nvidia chip and the remaining 2/3  bend over the heat sink)

The moment of truth.  Fired up speedfan and it showed GPU at 63C, a great improvement over HP set up. Note the 63C was measured under the mundane usage mode ( meaning the unit was running windows 7, plus AVG antivirus, tune-up utility, speedfan, diskeeper and who knows what back door operation was secretly operated by MS in the background ) using  firefox 4, such as writing this missive . What surprised was the CPU at only circa 44 ( never saw it before.) As noted before, the cpu was almost always running at 10C below GPU. I guess the gargantuan size of the copper sheet over the nvidia chip was really make the difference, in a way it tantamounts to be a second heat sink and the original sink is now dedicated to dissipate the CPU heat. I also noted at CPU temp below 50C, the fan speed was much much slower. (note: under tpfancontrol, the fan speed of this unit was measured between 5700 and 7800 revolution per minute, a crazy speed) Also noted I did not use the RM clock to undervolt.

Fired up the covertX to DVD to burn a 2GB DVD movie. The cpu was loaded at circa 80% and the burning would finish within an hour. During the phase of code conversion, the GPU was at circa 78C and the CPU was at roughly the same temp, jumping between 75 and 82 rapidly). Also noted no Rm Clock was used.

In fact, for reason unknown to me, RM clock made almost no difference even when the CPU was under load ( RM clock made no difference if CPU is in idle or at a multiplex under 6), could be the new and powerful fan ( running at 7870 revolution per minute, crazy speed)

The sound of music from this unit appears to be more enjoyable than the Asus unit I have, though both are equipped with Altec. And, yes, the tablet is wonderful with wacom for which I can write arcane chinese character with ease.

All in all, I think my ordeal is over., I've sinced moved over to thinkpad with an external wacom tablet. So, this hp-tx 2000 unit might live a long life for lack of use.

P.S. At the time when I finished writing this missive, the GPU was at 60C and the CPU was at 42C. Never saw CPU under 50C before.