Acer v15 Nitro 20+ C difference between core temps

Nickn
Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User
in 2016 Archives

I have recently purchased Acer V15 Nitro VN7-592G, I am using it for video editing and rendering.

i7-6700HQ
GeForce GTX 960M GeForce GTX 960M
8GB DDR4

CPU was overheating to high 90’s C and would sometimes hit 97. After a while I have decided to repaste the CPU and GPU as I got too worried about stressing the package so much. An hour or so of fiddling and old paste was gone and new Arctic Silver 5 was applied. My only concern was that CPU area was way smaller than the heatsink, original paste was smudged all over the heatsink and on the CPU. I applied paste on the CPU only, guessing that the remainder of the heatsink would stay clean and cause no issues.

Few stress tests in and a rendered video the temperatures went down:

Idle – 30/34C
Load – 80/90C
Room Temp – 24C

At this point I have discovered another issue or so it seems. Differences between core temperatures are substantial during load. Idling they are all at 30C to 34C. At load though it is a different story:

Core 0 – 90C
Core 1 – 73C
Core 2 – 89C
Core 3 – 66C
Package – 90C

That just looks bizarre. 90C and 66C that is 24C difference. Should I reapply the CPU paste and put it on the heatsink as well? Wait more for paste to settle? Any ideas, thoughts or comments?

Best Answer

  • benton582
    benton582 Member Posts: 213 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓

    I'm not very great at answering these types of answers with CPU cooling, but I think this thread will help: https://communities.intel.com/thread/21417 (Read the entire thread, it might help Smiley Happy )

     

    You might wanna use your Warranty and call Acer Support just in case, it could be a defect, but try solutions first! Good Luck! Smiley Very Happy

     

Answers

  • benton582
    benton582 Member Posts: 213 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓

    I'm not very great at answering these types of answers with CPU cooling, but I think this thread will help: https://communities.intel.com/thread/21417 (Read the entire thread, it might help Smiley Happy )

     

    You might wanna use your Warranty and call Acer Support just in case, it could be a defect, but try solutions first! Good Luck! Smiley Very Happy

     

  • Nickn
    Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User

    Thank you for your reply. According to the thread you have linked differences between the cores can be quite substantial if one is using a single core intensive task and usually even out during the heavy load on all the cores.

     

    It seems that this is the case for me too, I have noticed that during normal everyday use only core #0 would go up to 70's C while all others were running cooler, with the one furthest away physically from the #0 would be the coolest. Under stress tests that max out all four cores eventually even out with only couple of degrees of difference between them. The fact that laptop is using intel HD graphics while on battery might be contributing to the disbalance.

     

    So in a nutshell repasting the CPU helped drop around 10C and differences between cores might be because of the way laptop manages load with one core being in the priority during power saving processes. I will keep on monitoring, hopefully with further thermal cycles paste will settle in better and will yield better results.

     

    Thanks again as the thread you linked helped me with undertanding the problem better and put me at ease a little. I have posted on multiple forums with this being the first useful reply.

     

  • benton582
    benton582 Member Posts: 213 Enthusiast WiFi Icon

    No problem, thank you for using Acer Community, we're glad to help!

  • sharky25k
    sharky25k Member Posts: 473 Skilled Practitioner WiFi Icon

    Hi,

     

    If you do a stress test with some special software, eg Intel XTU, AIDA64, and the temperatures are close to each other then is fine. If there is extreme difference which is very constant that means that your paste did not spread correctly on the entire cpu dye.

     

    But I highly doubt it could be the case, since the CPU dye itself is very small.

     

    Also, because your initial question which was posted before you edited it was related to the extreme temperatures, well don't worry, the CPU is made to handle 90+ temperatures. It's a small notebook and unfortunately it will never be able to completely cool the CPU and GPU under heavy load, so the CPU will have some built in mechanisms to avoid damage, like thermal throttling. The same goes also for GPU.

  • Nickn
    Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User

    Thank you for your comment. I myself also doubt that the paste didn’t spread evenly as the actual dye is tiny, the only concern as mentioned before was the fact that factory paste was spread all around the heatsink as well as around the dye. I only applied it to the dye and left the heatsink clean to allow minimal thickness and natural spread of the paste from the dye. Maybe I needed to add some paste on the heatsink although it seems pointless as the rest of the heatsink does not connect directly to CPU dye nor to the rest of the chip as it just hangs over it.

    Running stress tests that you have recommended yielded following results:

     

    CPU#0 Max temp – 67C

    CPU#1 Max temp – 64C

    CPU#2 Max temp – 62C

    CPU#3 Max temp – 57C

    Average temps go as highest 63C to lowest 55C

     

    I also noticed that Core #0 is the only one that goes to 3491Mhz, all others only boost to 3292mHz. Can that be the reason for #0 to constantly run higher than the rest?

    Prime95 stress test though results on all cores boosting to the same 3491Mhz and temperatures peaking at 87C for the #0 and 71C for #3.

     

    So I guess question now is wether I should repaste it again including the whole of the heatsink or should I just leave it be?

  • sharky25k
    sharky25k Member Posts: 473 Skilled Practitioner WiFi Icon

    Hi,

     

    I would not worry about it. The temperatures look as they should. I think the paste is OK.

     

    Btw, it does not help at all if the paste is spread all over the place. It is important to be between the dye and the heatsink, it does not help at all if it's on the rest of the heatsink which does not come into contact with the dye itself.

     

    I changed the paste as well on my notebook and in my opinion Acer does a poor job in applying thermal paste. It's true, I am expecting that is done in an automatic process, so that's the result.

  • Nickn
    Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User

    I agree, once I have taken the heatsinks off the CPU and GPU it was quite messy and the actual dye paste was spotty and uneven. Whatever the case repasting did decrease max temperatures drastically on both CPU and GPU, so I will count as a win as the significant differences are only there during severe stress testing and don't really appear in day to day use (during video rendering which is my primary heavy use case for the laptop temps on all cores hover within 10-15 degrees centigrade from each other).

     

    Although I still don’t get why would max load temperatures be so different at times. I posted this on intel forums, maybe someone there would be able to explain those differences.

     

     

  • Nickn
    Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User

    Just an update in case someone has the same issue in the future.

     

    After a while I got a reply from Intel support that this kind of mobile processor is designed to run at high temperatures and difference between core temperatures is nothing to worry about.

     

    Despite the above I still went ahead and re-applied CPU paste one more time, this time around making sure that I have minimal thickness and maximum spread all around the dye.

     

    After reboot and 10-15 thermal cycles temperatures not only went down but the average difference between the cores is not at a healthy 5C degrees. I also installed Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and set the core voltage offset to -80mv (do at your own minimal risk). That decreases the top temperatures during heavy loads to 85C at highest.

    All in I am very pleased with the result.

     

    But I can only recommend it if you are comfortable with disassembling your laptop and reapplying the paste yourself potentially few times, if not take it to service and let them do it for you.  

     

    Thank you all again who replied.

  • sharky25k
    sharky25k Member Posts: 473 Skilled Practitioner WiFi Icon

    Hi,

     

    Be careful with the undervolting. While it can look stable in stress tests like XTU stress test or AIDA64, for me it happened in low level loads that the PC just restarted (aka crashed).

     

    The problem is that you undervolt the voltage which is set to adaptive, and is not always the same value.

     

    I had this issue very rarely while the CPU was undervolted, but after a few crashes like this, I told that it doesn't worth it.

  • Nickn
    Nickn Member Posts: 14 New User

    Undervolt is only active while on high performance setting with minimal CPU state set at 100%. During normal use I usually let it be at default settings, although it has been running for three days with undervolt active on all power settings with no crashes.

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