ATITools

[OriginalJoeCool]

I got my HP Envy17 laptop back from HP. If you recall, I was having problems with overheating (gpu-z measured temps over 90 degrees, even sometimes over 100C). They replaced the fan and heatsink. The gpu seems to be working ok now. The laptop is still hot, but temps stay below 90 generally.

I've noticed gpu-z indicates the fan is always at 30%. I read it'll only go above if the temperature reaches 95C. I'd like to manually adjust the fan speed to bring the temps down. I installed ATITools. The problem is the program needs a kernel-mode driver and Windows will not allow it to run because it's not digitally signed. Errr! Anyone know away around this! I've searched the Internet, but nothing yet.

 

[GFreeman]

You can try flashing your bios with RBE adjusting the fan speed at a certain temperature, but there's an easier way to do that by software. Try using MSI Afterburner.

You can enable fan control by this program and change it to your preferred settings. Then just put the fan on auto and your settings will become active. Manual ofcourse means selecting just one fan speed.

Download: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
Manual: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/images/Afterburner User Manual.pdf

It works for nVidia and ATI cards.

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Thanks for the tip. However, in this program, the fan control is not available. The manual says "Fan speed control is not available if graphics card is not equipped with fan controller chip and (or)
controllable cooling system". So I guess I'm out of luck?.

 

[Optix]

I was going to suggest RivaTuner but Afterburner is essentially that but skinned differently.

You may have no choice but save, edit and import the BIOS with updated fan settings. it wouldn't allow you to control the fan on the fly but it could allow you to set the threshold for when the fan kicks in.

Is ATITools different than ATITrayTool?

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Tried RivaTuner, too, and as you said, it was the same deal. I have the Radeon Bios Editor, so I might give that a try.

 

[Optix]

BIOS modder beware, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Yup! RBE wouldn't let me edit fan settings. But it asked me if I'd like it to fix RivaTuner. I said yes. And suddenly in RivaTuner I could change the fan settings!

 

[Optix]

Well, well, well...that's a nice little bonus. Well done. Things like that are always nice from an end user standpoint but annoy the hell out of me from a troubleshooting position.

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Yeah, increasing fan speed doesn't seem to have helped. I heard it speed up, but I don't think it affected temperatures. If anything, it got worse. My games have started crashing again, too.

 

[Kougar]

Laptop fans aren't like computer case fans, where more speed always means more airflow. The chassis design is going impede airflow and so will the cooling fins, although the fan relative to the intake vent also has a huge impact. For example some intake vents don't leave enough space between them and the underside of the laptop to allow for airflow. So if maxing out the fan it'll begin sucking vacuum as much as air for any one of those reasons, which can in turn give worse performance.

Glad ya got Rivatuner working... if you didn't see ANY drop in temps are you sure it changed the correct fan?

Given this is a laptop in question, it would probably be easier to use a program that ties into the laptop hardware rather than through the graphics drivers. The newest version is beta though, but next time anyone needs to modify laptop fan settings or processor speeds / voltages, I'd recommend http://www.pbus-167.com/nhc/nhc.htm

Honestly, for a heat situation that bad I'd try undervolting the GPU, although you need to be extremely sure you don't compromise stability when you think you have a stable voltage figured out... small errors that don't result in display corruption are the ones you need to worry about.

Edit: Interesting, my post auto-created a link to newegg's computer case page? I didn't put that in there, and doesn't show up when editing this. The hyperlink needs to be in green to signify I didn't create it...

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Thanks for the tips, Kougar! I'm leaving the fan at 50% since having it full blast doesn't help. At this point, I don't know what I should do really. Duke Nukem Forever seems to really push it for some reason. That game pushes it past 90C and crashes frequently.

 

[Kougar]

Well if a notebook cooler doesn't help and undervolting the GPU doesn't help enough, then I'm out of ideas. Except possibly moving your room into the fridge, it does have some perks...

I undervolt my laptop's processor all the time using that program, and it significantly dropped temps without impacting performance... if it is possible to do so (RivaTuner might support it for the GPU, not sure what would for ATI specifically).