Laptop turns itself off (overheating?) while gaming

[elitebookuser]

Hello,

whenever I play a game for a while (e.g. Portal), at some point my HP Elitebook 8540p suddenly turns itself off. I believe this is some sort of overheating protection, however my laptop shouldn't be overheating in the first place, should it?

The notebook is less than a year old.

[jasongarrett]

I have the same issue with my HP 8540w Laptop overheating.

It is definitely the Thermal Protection causing the immediate power off.  My laptop is very hot to the touch, on the left back bottom edge where the heatsink and fan sit.

I've found that the vent can collect dust and fluff in, and have already cleared this one.  Taking an air can to it today after another recent run of overheating blew a reasonable amount of dust out.

I find that using graphics intensive apps such as Sony Vegas Studio, rendering videos, or using Firefox with several rogue scripts or Youtube windows open, cause the fan to run at full speed as the laptop runs hot.

The fan running at full speed is my first clue that the laptop is at risk of overheating.  Sometimes I have been able to close Firefox, and the fan calms down after a minute or two.

I am using Windows 7 SP1, 12GB, with NVidia Quadro FX1800M and Driver v8.17.12.6776.

I'm about to look at newer releases of the Driver, as I've read a couple of generic sites mentioning the Graphics card could be run poorly by faulty drivers.

The overheating issue is slowly forcing me into a rebuild, and then a Warranty claim.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

[jasongarrett]

I can add that I have the 8540w, showing Model 'Delphi D40' under the battery.

[jmcclune]

This happens to me frequently as well, both while gaming, and while rendering video.

I have no idea what to do here, as the thing shuts off at the most inopportune times, ie the middle of a render or game, or video.

Can anyone help out here?

[markacousticfem]

I have an HP WORKSTATION 8540w with a corei7 820qm processor.

Running a FEM solver I used to be able to solve 4 problems overnight with all four cores runnning at 100% ... after one year I could only solve 2 problems without thermal shutdown ... now I can only solve one problem. I will take the machine appart to clean and replace the thermal compound with a silver loaded high performance one. Hopefully this will fix the problem albeit temporarily. I also had a similar problem with my last HP 'workstation'. I think the Bios should throttle the CPU and NEVER allow a hard thermal shutdown.I beleive it is possible to set the BIOS so it is in battery mode while on the mains and this  does go some way to doing this .....

This is very poor behaviour for a so called workstation purchased at a premium price for professional use.

There is another similar post for someone doing CAD work but not replies from HP.

In these days of CFD computation they really ought to get their thermal  design right and have readily removable dustfilters

- they could even think about putting an extra fan+filter in the docking station.

[LesterClayton]

Regrettably, I have this same issue.  Using Handbrake (video rendering software) to convert an HD movie to smaller format for my Galaxy Tab uses all 4 CPU's on the laptop and it shuts down after a few minutes of running.  I surmise that I may too have to take it apart and give it a blow job.

I could of course limit the amount of threads it uses, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a quad core 🙂  I'll try the silver thermal compound suggestion, if I can find some.

[thracian]

Same issue. I think what caused it is Outlook trying to sync with Hotmail for many hours putting the CPU at 15% utilization. This somehow damaged the cooling system and the laptop would get hotter and hotter and the fan louder and louder. I had to send the laptop for repair and then it was OK.

Recently, I had the same issue with Outlook which resulted in the same overheating issue with the laptop. Minimum CPU pressure will cause the fan to engage and the laptop bottom is so hot that it cannot be used as a laptop anymore.

If I start experiencing the same shutdown issue, I'll need to send it again to HP. The issue is that the 3yr warranty will expire next year. I guess the laptop cooling system is not designed properly.

[Proton]

Hi there peeps, I have bought an Hp Elitebook 8540p and I also have the same issue here.. I cant play a game for 5 min then it shuts off! I cannot even open too many things at the same time then the same thing happens... its not as if I play games on it in any way, but its supposed to be able to handle a little game! I mean with 1gb dedicated GPU... 

has any of you reached a solution yet? does the new thermal paste thing work? 

please let me know guys

thanks

[Proton]

Just to let everyone know, HP has just replaced my MB, My CPU, my heatsinks and my fan, laptop now runs cool again..

thanks HP. 

BUT! the games still doesnt work, all games bombs out after about 10-15min, of play.. bu tthe temp stays low... so I have no clue where to go from here.l. 😞

[jasongarrett]

We have 18 x 8440p's and 14 x 8460's and they are perfect compared to the 2 x 8540w's we have.

Initially, the 8540's stood out for their Graphics and speed, but the heat soon set in.

The newer laptops have resolved the heat issue.  Sure they can get warm, but nowhere near as bad as the 8540w's.  I could almost thermal shutdown the 8540w I had at the time on demand.  My colleague who still uses his, rebuilt his from scratch sometime ago, and did not load any of the standard HP fluff/drivers that the standard build has.  After doing so, the majority of niggles/issues went away.

This suggests OS/Drivers play a strong part in the overall overheating, rather than just the laptop itself.