Brand new gaming laptop - overheats with all Steam games only

[Sunny Kenora]

I just got a swank new laptop for gaming. Works fantastic with all my Gog Galaxy and Epic games but everything from Steam kicks the fan into overdrive and overheats the machine. My old laptop didn't have any of these issues and it was way old. What's wrong that is causing this with Steam only?

[ChipOnAStick]

Neither Steam, Epic, nor GOG has control over you fan profiles. It likely depends on the content you are playing and what you have running in the background. Your older laptop likely didn't run into this issue because it had much smaller energy consumption. Yes, engineers aim to increase proficiency with better architectures, but for electronics to become significantly more powerful, that power increase is usually due to an increase in power consumption. As power consumption increases, so to does heat generation and the need for larger/more efficient cooling systems.

That said, this type of thread would fair better in the Hardware/OS forum.

[ChipOnAStick]

Originally posted by dazza0511:

Sorry but i have no sympathy for a laptop gamer, you are paying more for less. Also you probably playing with wifi meaning you ruin other people's online experience particularly in fighting games.

My brother in Christ, you're tweaking. Just because you can't understand the core utility of a laptop, doesn't mean his use isn't justified. Relax.

[Exvalcore]

Say what now, what the heck is wrong with being a laptop user hello, seriously I've only ever used a laptop for pc gaming it was to play skyrim"oldrim" & fallout 4 using a 1050GTX(750$ laptop at the time wow times have changing since then), it worked just fine, granted I've downgraded to a worst laptop & stopped gaming since then & have not replaced it yet but a laptop works just fine, in fact I plan to upgrade to a 3060 laptop by the end of this year & it only costs 660$, not a 4060 for 900$ like I was wanting but after seeing 4060's performance only boosting games around 10% vs a 3060 it's fair to say I may as well save the 240$, its perfect for 1080~1440p gaming.

[Sunny Kenora]

Originally posted by ChipOnAStick:

Neither Steam, Epic, nor GOG has control over you fan profiles. It likely depends on the content you are playing and what you have running in the background. Your older laptop likely didn't run into this issue because it had much smaller energy consumption. Yes, engineers aim to increase proficiency with better architectures, but for electronics to become significantly more powerful, that power increase is usually due to an increase in power consumption. As power consumption increases, so to does heat generation and the need for larger/more efficient cooling systems.

That said, this type of thread would fair better in the Hardware/OS forum.

Thanks. I haven't posted on the forum before. Still finding my way around. :)

Still strikes me as really odd though - everything else works great on the new machine on other platforms. It's just Steam and it's with every game, nothing running in the background, and all my games are single player. Makes no sense to me that it's doing this! I'll do some more digging. Thx.

[Sunny Kenora]

Originally posted by dazza0511:

Sorry but i have no sympathy for a laptop gamer, you are paying more for less. Also you probably playing with wifi meaning you ruin other people's online experience particularly in fighting games.

I don't play any fighting or online games. I play solo stuff - mostly tower defense, puzzle games, and city build/simulation. But thanks for your assumptions, my dude. Maybe take a break every now and then.

[Watermelon {JESUS IS LORD}]

Originally posted by dazza0511:

Sorry but i have no sympathy for a laptop gamer, you are paying more for less. Also you probably playing with wifi meaning you ruin other people's online experience particularly in fighting games.

my laptop was cheaper then my desktop and has more performance then my desktop

[Satoru]

Heat is a cooling problem not a game problem. Games cannot overheat your system. Because your system is responsible for heat management not the game. This is like blaming the server rack because your server overheated when your air conditioners were failing. Your servers overheated not because of the server rack, but because your AC was bad

Same with your laptop. Any game can use 100% of your CPU and 100% of your GPU. Its the laptops job to dissipate heat so that's not an issue. Its not the game's responsibility to fix your cooling situation.

Generally speaking 'overheating' laptops are common because

1) Your intake and/or outake vents are clogged. Extremely common scenario. You can do your best to try to blow out the dust but if you're a tthe 'my laptop is dying' phase usually that requires you to open the laptop and see how many cats are sleeping inside your fans
2) your fans are broken, not running etc. Its worth stressign the system and then seeing if you can feel any air out the exhaust vents. Generally using a small piece of tissue or toilet paper is a better way of seeing if air is blowing out or into vents.
3) you're blocking the vents. I have seen VERY dumb things like people putting stickers over these vents and then wondering why the inside of their laptops is turning into molten lava. You could be blocking the vents via other ways such though.

[ChipOnAStick]

Originally posted by Sunny Kenora:

Originally posted by dazza0511:

Sorry but i have no sympathy for a laptop gamer, you are paying more for less. Also you probably playing with wifi meaning you ruin other people's online experience particularly in fighting games.

I don't play any fighting or online games. I play solo stuff - mostly tower defense, puzzle games, and city build/simulation. But thanks for your assumptions, my dude. Maybe take a break every now and then.

If the titles you play on Steam are city builders/sims then you might just be surprised by the graphical intensity of those games. City Skylines graphical fidelity is nothing to gawk at, but as you develop larger cities, there are far more of those tiny moving pieces to render. LOD's are also quite difficult to do in those sort of games as your camera is often viewing everything all at once.

Give us some examples of what you're playing across Epic, Steam, etc. and we might be able to pinpoint the exact issue.

Originally posted by Satoru:

Heat is a cooling problem not a game problem. Games cannot overheat your system.

That's a gross oversimplification. A process' intensity will absolutely cause your system to heat up. Please research thermal throttling, voltage profiles and fan profiles.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by ChipOnAStick:

That's a gross oversimplification. A process' intensity will absolutely cause your system to heat up. Please research thermal throttling, voltage profiles and fan profiles.

Again games/apps are not responsible for heat dissipation. This is like saying "your car engine overheated because you went over 100km/h". Your speed didn't cause the car to overheat. Your cooling system being broken did.

Your system is designed to run your GPU and CPU at 100% for literally years 24/7/365 without problem. Heat is a cooling problem, not a game problem. Because games are NOT responsible for heat or heat dissipation.

Overheating is NOT caused by games

It caused by BAD COOLING

That is not an 'over simplification' it is literally facts. You do not solve overheating by thinking "wow I should start underclocking my CPU to 1GHz and have it use only 1 core, and tune down my GPU to use only 5%", any more than you would solve your overheating Ferrari by going "Wow I should stop driving over 60km/h"

I mean you don't actually seem to understand the root cause of anything. You're just thinking "wow the built in protections of the motherboard are saving me phew well I'll just not play this game anymore" as opposed to you know maybe thinking "wait why is my computer turning into molten slag when doing something absolutely normal"

[ChipOnAStick]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Again games/apps are not responsible for heat dissipation.

0 people in this thread have made this claim.

The source of OP's issue is that some titles activate his high speed fan profiles while others don't. He drew the incorrect conclusion that it was due to Steam because only the games he plays on Steam activate his high speed fan profiles.

As I stated before, the intensity/quantity of processes you run dictates how much heat your computer will produce.

Heat dissipation is dictated by your computers cooling techniques to include thermal throttling (voltage regulation) and fan profiles.

Please stop your tangent. You're flexing unnecessary information.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by ChipOnAStick:

Originally posted by Satoru:

Again games/apps are not responsible for heat dissipation.

0 people in this thread have made this claim.

The source of OP's issue is that some titles activate his high speed fan profiles while others don't. He drew the incorrect conclusion that it was due to Steam because only the games he plays on Steam activate his high speed fan profiles.

As I stated before, the intensity/quantity of processes you run dictates how much heat your computer will produce.

Heat dissipation is dictated by your computers cooling techniques to include thermal throttling (voltage regulation) and fan profiles.

Please stop your tangent. You're flexing unnecessary information.

Apps and Games are not responsible for heat dissipation. That is at least 1 other person who has more experience in this than yourself. If you feel otherwise, fine, but it is just advise that is being provided to you and you aren't required to follow any of it.


By the way go into which ever steam game you're having an issue with, turn on heat dissipation and that should fix your problem. /sarcasm

Originally posted by dazza0511:

Sorry but i have no sympathy for a laptop gamer, you are paying more for less. Also you probably playing with wifi meaning you ruin other people's online experience particularly in fighting games.

I've seen better bait. You have several bans.

[DarkCrystalMethod]

Try this...
Add a non-steam game...
find calc.exe and then start it through steam.
Confirm that the extra workload is coming from the game or if steam in its operations is just doing too much(even if the game is idle).

[ChipOnAStick]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Apps and Games are not responsible for heat dissipation.

My brother in Christ, are you boofing stupid juice? I never said that and yet despite how explicit and concise I've been you trolls continue to put words in my mouth.

You guys need to learn how to read. You even quoted my words and somehow you failed to read them.

I'll say it once again, the intensity/quantity of processes you run dictates how much heat your computer will produce. Heat output is determined by load.

Heat dissipation is dictated by your computers cooling techniques to include thermal throttling (voltage regulation) and fan profiles.

My computer at idle is not going to produce as much heat as if I were running, for example, an intense video game. That's just basic common sense and a result of rudimentary voltage regulation. Once your computer reaches a certain temperature, your computer begins to activate/speed up it's fans based on preconfigured profiles in order to alleviate temperatures. If the fans cannot keep up with the accelerating heat produced by whatever load your computer is processing, it will thermal throttle to prevent damage and reduce temperatures while suffering an overall performance reduction.

If you people @ me with some nonsense again, I will lose my mind.

[xAlphaStarOmegax]

Look into getting a cooling pad to sit under your laptop.

[Hammer Of Evil]

steam is running really memory and cpu heavy, this version is wacky and giving inferior performance to everyone, but laptops will feel it even more.

so far the memory leak seems to go away if you restart steam a few times.

however, the laptop will always be a bit toasty. its a lot of electronics packed into a tiny space, its going to make a lot of heat.