hardware damage from overheating

vlassakos

Estimable
Aug 29, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hello everyone ,

As far as I know , overheating can be very dangerous for the laptop hardware. My problem is that when I play a specific game , both my cpu/gpu start overheating , and after 40mins of gaming , cpu(i7 4700mq) is at 80-85*Celsius while gpu( gt 740M) is at 75*C.To prevent hardware damage , should I give my system some time to drop the temprature before I start playing again , or damage can be caused just from reaching that high tempratures? I just want to know that because I'm almost sure that this is a problem of the game , since I cleaned laptop and replaced thermal paste 42 days ago and I get these tempratures only when I play this.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Those temperatures aren't an immediate danger. They are a bit high (especially the CPU), but nothing unusual for a laptop. In the long term, those temps might have a negative effect on your notebook longevity, but we're talking about years if not decades. I believe it should be able to handle that kind of temperatures for its useful life and then some.

Most modern CPU and GPU have built-in thermal protections to prevent damage from overheating. If the temperature gets too high, your CPU/GPU will start throttling (the frequency will get lower and lower). If that is not enough, your system will shut down to prevent damage. That temperature limit is usually around 95C. Of course, you will want to keep the temperature as far from that as...

dav_jw

Distinguished
Jan 18, 2010
22
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18,590
Those temperatures aren't an immediate danger. They are a bit high (especially the CPU), but nothing unusual for a laptop. In the long term, those temps might have a negative effect on your notebook longevity, but we're talking about years if not decades. I believe it should be able to handle that kind of temperatures for its useful life and then some.

Most modern CPU and GPU have built-in thermal protections to prevent damage from overheating. If the temperature gets too high, your CPU/GPU will start throttling (the frequency will get lower and lower). If that is not enough, your system will shut down to prevent damage. That temperature limit is usually around 95C. Of course, you will want to keep the temperature as far from that as possible. Here are a few things you could try:

-Make you your notebook is sitting on a hard, flat surface, especially when gaming.

-Raise the back of your notebook by a few centimeters to allow better airflow. You can use a book, for example.

-Manually throttle (limit the clock rate) your CPU. To do this, go to control panel, power options. Next to the active profile (you could also create a new profile), click on "Change plan settings", then "Change advanced power settings". Find "Processor power management" and enter a lower value under "Maximum processor state". For example, you could try 80%. Depending on the games you play, this might negatively affect your frame rate (your CPU is very powerful and your GPU is much weaker, so I doubt it will be an issue).

-Take breaks every hour or so to let it cool a bit.

-Try to reapply the thermal paste (depends of what paste you used and if you suspect you might have put too much or not enough (if your temperatures are higher than they were or what you think they should be, for example).

-If all else fails, invest in a notebook cooling pad.
 
Solution