| Overclocking a laptop | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 4:15 am | |
| Googling it gives way too many different opinions.
Has anyone here done it? Has it caught fire?
I run a fan next to mine to enable it to play Diablo 3 + watch a movie in HD (have a monitor attached + the laptop screen). Without the fan it overheats. With the fan I can run D3 on max settings without it overheating, without the fan it practically melts.
It's pretty powerful for a laptop, new. It's top notch in everything except the graphics card... I found a way to overclock it or do something to it to get more kick out of it, but is it safe?
Thinking about maybe getting some additional games such as Skyrim. No FPS of course 'cause PC FPSes are for fags but I think I could enjoy Skyrim more with console commands. Laptop can run them easily... except the graphics card.
Any suggestions? | |
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Skreshavik Mordekaiser
Posts : 5997 Points : 6336 Reputation : 55 Join date : 2010-04-30 Age : 34 Location : California/Oregon
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:30 am | |
| Overclocking speeds up processes, so it's going to have a much higher heat generation than what the manufacturer intended for it. Can it support it? Maybe, maybe not. The main issues is if you have a heat sink and if you can reliably discharge all of the heat generated before it becomes cumulative and causes damage.
It's not a recommended idea for a laptop due to the fact that everything is very compact and expunging the heat is usually poor, especially with fans underneath with little to no airflow unless suspended. My friend tried it with his GTX 260m. About a year in, his graphic driver stopped working. He just gave it to his son, who cannibalized it and showed me the chip. Carbon chips were falling from the card lol.
So my point is if you can reliably remove all of the heat before it becomes cumulative and damages the other bits nearby, go for it. Otherwise, do it at your own risk. | |
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GnarlyBromance Admin
Posts : 1838 Points : 2266 Reputation : 7 Join date : 2010-03-19 Age : 35 Location : Austin, TX
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:41 am | |
| I wouldn't in a laptop. Might work for a while, but due to heat will probably decrease the overall life of it and eventually fry | |
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CptnShotgun Eezo junkie
Posts : 2382 Points : 2487 Reputation : 7 Join date : 2010-03-19 Location : Cyborg Docking Station 4
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:42 am | |
| Don't do it.
Just don't.
There is not nearly enough airflow to cool it sufficiently, it'll work for a while but not without serious damage to your components. Overclocking is almost always done with an aftermarket cooler and tracking one down for a laptop that will cool enough and will actually fit is a mammoth task.
Unless you plan on using it to cause a fire, then go for it. | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:20 pm | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:44 pm | |
| I should point out it has an extra large battery which causes the back to lift up a bit, so there is room for air flow underneath. And I have a fan pointing straight at the overheating parts. So it does stay very cool as long as that fan is on.
How about swapping in a new GFX card? Possible or recommended? | |
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Skreshavik Mordekaiser
Posts : 5997 Points : 6336 Reputation : 55 Join date : 2010-04-30 Age : 34 Location : California/Oregon
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:52 pm | |
| As I said, do at your own risk. If you think you can vent out enough heat for it to not build up, go for it.
What's your model laptop? | |
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RoninHo'in Paranoid Vet
Posts : 8157 Points : 8617 Reputation : 47 Join date : 2010-03-22 Age : 42 Location : Cali baby
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:57 pm | |
| - Fido wrote:
- I should point out it has an extra large battery which causes the back to lift up a bit, so there is room for air flow underneath. And I have a fan pointing straight at the overheating parts. So it does stay very cool as long as that fan is on.
How about swapping in a new GFX card? Possible or recommended? I'd lift it even more.... do you know those paper trays offices use? They make great laptop stands leaving the maxx of area under the laptop greatly open. COmbine this with increased airflow from a fan and you'll significantly increase your laptops cooling capacity. That said..... overheating laptops is a risky venture. Touch the bottom of your laptop after a play session and see if you can feel any hot spots. Doesn't matter if overall the machine is cool, 1 lil spot of high heat will cause a meltdown | |
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GnarlyBromance Admin
Posts : 1838 Points : 2266 Reputation : 7 Join date : 2010-03-19 Age : 35 Location : Austin, TX
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:03 pm | |
| - RoninHo'in wrote:
- Fido wrote:
- I should point out it has an extra large battery which causes the back to lift up a bit, so there is room for air flow underneath. And I have a fan pointing straight at the overheating parts. So it does stay very cool as long as that fan is on.
How about swapping in a new GFX card? Possible or recommended? I'd lift it even more.... do you know those paper trays offices use? They make great laptop stands leaving the maxx of area under the laptop greatly open.
COmbine this with increased airflow from a fan and you'll significantly increase your laptops cooling capacity.
That said..... overheating laptops is a risky venture. Touch the bottom of your laptop after a play session and see if you can feel any hot spots. Doesn't matter if overall the machine is cool, 1 lil spot of high heat will cause a meltdown That is more the issue, while raising it, and blowing air from an external source helps, the CPU is a concentrated area that will be creating alot of heat. CPU coolers are designed to use very large heatsinks and fins to create a larger cooling surface area, then blow alot of air over it to cool it off. In a laptop you don't really have the luxury for a large surface area to mitigate heat. The usual approach is to basically have a high speed fan force air over what little heat sink is in the laptop. yeh... at your own risk really. As for upgrading a Laptops GPU, can be hard sometimes. Laptop GPUs are usually specifically made for your exact product line... | |
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RoninHo'in Paranoid Vet
Posts : 8157 Points : 8617 Reputation : 47 Join date : 2010-03-22 Age : 42 Location : Cali baby
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:06 pm | |
| yah... all of these are the cornerstone argue points on why laptop gaming is not a great, or at least, usually prohibitively expensive, venture.
You say you can play D3 on max while OCing... but how close can you get without OCing?
In short... does it really gain you that much?
If you can live with the lower performance, I'd highly recommend it if you want your laptop to survive 3-5 years. | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:27 pm | |
| - RoninHo'in wrote:
- yah... all of these are the cornerstone argue points on why laptop gaming is not a great, or at least, usually prohibitively expensive, venture.
You say you can play D3 on max while OCing... but how close can you get without OCing?
In short... does it really gain you that much?
If you can live with the lower performance, I'd highly recommend it if you want your laptop to survive 3-5 years. I haven't overclocked it. I can play D3 on max and get 50+ FPS except when everything freaks out where it drops to 10 or so. Act 3 on the walls is a good example of when it slows down. It's a Toshiba P750D I believe, I didn't want it to game but while getting it I did select the max possible of every option. It's a good little laptop, just not made for gaming, primarily thanks to the gfx card I believe. When starting D3 the first time it said the card wasn't supported, but it still let me play. I play on min settings 99% of the time btw, was just pointing out that it could do max settings without freaking out. But I don't think it can play Skyrim, for example. | |
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RoninHo'in Paranoid Vet
Posts : 8157 Points : 8617 Reputation : 47 Join date : 2010-03-22 Age : 42 Location : Cali baby
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:29 pm | |
| D/L skyrim off of a torrent to try it out and see.... it very well might work though you might have to downscale it to worse textures than you'd see on console (maybe)
My laptop without even a GFX card (integrated) was able to actually run it. It was just too slow to be playable. | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:34 pm | |
| I don't want to go through the trouble of that if it's gonna be too slow. | |
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Skreshavik Mordekaiser
Posts : 5997 Points : 6336 Reputation : 55 Join date : 2010-04-30 Age : 34 Location : California/Oregon
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:36 pm | |
| Is it this? http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?poid=2000016423
Since it doesn't say anything about the graphics card, I'm going to assume it's an integrated card, which means it's directly tied with the motherboard and all of that other fun stuff. Technically, you can't just swap out for a different graphics card unless you want to replace everything else.
When D3 said that the card wasn't supported, it just means they won't do anything about it if a future or current update screws everything over for compatibility.
Oh, public board, forgot about that... | |
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RoninHo'in Paranoid Vet
Posts : 8157 Points : 8617 Reputation : 47 Join date : 2010-03-22 Age : 42 Location : Cali baby
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:41 pm | |
| - Fido wrote:
- I don't want to go through the trouble of that if it's gonna be too slow.
Did you miss the part where I said I don't even have a gfx card? O.o And it really isn't a hard thing ya know. Find Torrent (3-5 min of extreme effort) Download and start torrent, leave machine on overnight. Mount ISO and Install skyrim ??? Profit maybe? It would seriously not take that much of your actual time at the keyboard. 3-5 min to find and start the torrent, another 5 or so to get installation process started the next day. Skyrim doesn't have any crazy hack workaround BS to do to get it to work. | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:50 pm | |
| Skresh: Yeah, that's it. I got this one last summer, it was a grand then after everything got added to it. When getting the laptop I was operating under the (so far correct) assumption that I'd be using it for a while, for college stuff, so I loaded as much as possible on it to keep it relevant as long as possible. Never intended it for gaming but of course a year later, some good games are coming out. I'd never go FPS for PC, but Skyrim's pretty fucking tempting.
Ronin: I don't want to torrent it. | |
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AmPLiFiKaTioN Astro Jesus
Posts : 4357 Points : 4505 Reputation : -17 Join date : 2010-03-21 Age : 30 Location : Minnesota
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:02 pm | |
| Shit, you paid a grand for that? I wouldn't pay a penny over $400 for an A6 w/ 4GB of RAM. It's all about ASUS, man. I'm buying a 14" ASUS U46E-BAL7 for $750 in a couple weeks. i7, 8GB of RAM, 750GB HDD, and 8 hours of battery life; it's legit. | |
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Fido emo
Posts : 5465 Points : 5955 Reputation : 43 Join date : 2010-04-18
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:05 pm | |
| It was a year ago, and I did mention I got a bunch of upgrades on it. It has 8GB, 64-bit, 12 hours of battery life. Lots of software as well. It was a good deal back then.
Of course the battery life depends on what I'm using it for, but it's the best battery I could get on it at the time.
Edit: 12 cell not 12 hour. | |
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AmPLiFiKaTioN Astro Jesus
Posts : 4357 Points : 4505 Reputation : -17 Join date : 2010-03-21 Age : 30 Location : Minnesota
| Subject: Re: Overclocking a laptop Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:16 pm | |
| Oh okay, that's not too bad then. | |
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