MSI Laptop Heatsink Degradation Issue - GE75 RTX 2080 (Not Max-Q)

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AVATAR Sep 15, 2020 @ 2:21am

Short: Heat not leaving laptop proper way anymore under load.

Giving my best try here to find someone with similar issues may be.
Purchased in May 19, worked fine till Dec 19.
Started with Metro Exodus / Tomb Raider, no issues on ultras. Some easy multimedia and games till RDR2 in December. That's where my SSD started dying getting 85 degrees, in cooler room during Winter.
Each repasting did not solve a problem, even liquid metal. I got really lower idle temperatures, but when getting to any game it's like "Lets fry inner parts" (RAM, new Samsung SSDs, Sound system up to 100 degrees).

Therefore:

Thermal Paste or Liquid metal do their job while idling.
My Core i7-9750H is capable to consume up to 120 Watts of electricity (whole system) under tests.
With Heavy Games laptop consuption varies from power plan somewhere from 180 to 250 Watts, throttling is a must.
Fans are clear, no dust inside, ventilation is fine. Laptop easily reaches max temps during gaming with freezes and drops in old titles like BF4 or Where the water tastes like wine.
But the worst of it: HEAT STAYS INSIDE THE LAPTOP. It is still HOT air coming out by fans, just that inner parts are bathing in heat.
I use laptop cooling pad to prevent ssd and other parts overheating. It is less and less effective.
Heatsink is not damaged.
Undervolting does not help much. Lowering max frequency/ disabling turbo boost weakens laptop a lot

So anyone experienced Heatsink degradation?

Last edited by AVATAR; Sep 15, 2020 @ 2:25am

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Showing 1-15 of 17 comments

Jelly Donut Sep 15, 2020 @ 2:30am

I am not particularly sure but to begin with, laptops are definitely one of the hardest things to go. In fact most of it are just designed with the borderline cooling.

For instance, I believe the heatsinks designed for the CPU for instance is probably designed for 45W-65W TDP versus 120W TDP.

But you may want to consider contacting MSI about this if your laptop is still under warranty.

AVATAR Sep 15, 2020 @ 3:16am

Nope, not anymore under warranty. You are right about CPU, I have seen top 70 Watts in test for just CPU, while the whole system drains 120 according to the Wattmeter. My point that 200 Watts should be dispersed somehow and cooling system "degrades" if that's possible.

Originally posted by UponTheSky:
I am not particularly sure but to begin with, laptops are definitely one of the hardest things to go. In fact most of it are just designed with the borderline cooling.

For instance, I believe the heatsinks designed for the CPU for instance is probably designed for 45W-65W TDP versus 120W TDP.

But you may want to consider contacting MSI about this if your laptop is still under warranty.

Jelly Donut Sep 15, 2020 @ 3:30am

Originally posted by AVATAR:
Nope, not anymore under warranty. You are right about CPU, I have seen top 70 Watts in test for just CPU, while the whole system drains 120 according to the Wattmeter. My point that 200 Watts should be dispersed somehow and cooling system "degrades" if that's possible.

If a cooling system degrades that fast (assuming your system is in a proper space and not getting humidity and etc), then in this case (IMHO) it's MSI's fault and whoever engineered the heatsink.

Also if you noticed, most laptops, despite their cooling advertisements like "Razer Vapor Chamber Cooling" or "MSI Cooler Boost" or "Alienware Cryo Tech Cooling" are all just marketing ploy. Most laptops today are not designed to hold the full boost of the GPU and CPU. Also to make matters worse, considering Intel is still on the same 14nm process, it's not an efficient CPU either making it a challenge for any laptop manufacturer to design a cooling system for it.

I used to have an Alienware laptop with an i7-8750H and it actually had a great cooling system, but it was ruined by the stock thermal paste and poor conducting design (CPU side) by Dell. But while it was just fresh and repasted before it "degraded", the CPU TDP and power was nearly matching a desktop 8700 when pinned with a CPU load test via Furmark and cooled really well, but yea, some PC makers today are just bad at stability or they are just rushing out lackluster products.

Last edited by Jelly Donut; Sep 15, 2020 @ 3:30am

R.V. Oct 17, 2021 @ 10:55am

same here i have MSI ge75 with rtx 2080
i used many thermal pastes it's only good for a week or so then every thing start to heat

Talby Oct 17, 2021 @ 11:08am

replace both cpu and gpu fans, you will be surprised how quickly small fans experience performance degradation...

cpu fan[www.amazon.com]
gpu fan[www.amazon.com]

since you're using a lap cooler, and if you are ok with voiding warranty or it's out of warranty, consider drilling some holes to swiss-cheese the bottom panel to help force airflow - also helps quite a bit

Viking2121 Oct 17, 2021 @ 12:52pm

I bought MSI gaming laptop not long ago and yeah, their coolers suck! I changed out the thermal past on both the 2060 and the CPU and even threw a thermal pad on the back of the heat pipe above the CPU so when I install the bottom back on, it had a little more pressure pushing down the cooler right over the CPU, seemed to work a little, Still often throttled at 98C before I hit a power limit. The GPU was nice and cool though.

I used ThrottleStop to undervolt the CPU and the System Agent voltage which helped a ton, I ended up selling that laptop, for the 2060 laptop, it performed like crap due to how dedicated card video went threw the on board video which made a it worse than 1660 on other laptops that did it right.

Not a fan of MSI laptops.

AVATAR Oct 18, 2021 @ 8:12am

Oh, replies.
I partially solved the issue.
You need some compressed air and blow all the dust out of the heatsink and fans, repaste with any decent thermal compound. I even tried the liquid metal.
New thermo + clean heatsink panel = 73 degrees on gpu (163 F). Depending on your clean and fresh air, you might get around 200-300 workload hours before throttling at around 84C/183F.
No unvervolting, no throttlestop.
I have a cooling pad I would rate below average. Highly recommended any when gaming.

_I_ Oct 18, 2021 @ 8:41am

get a laptop cooling pad, or one of these, that you can attach to the exhaust vent
https://www.amazon.com/%E2%AD%90%EF%B8%8FKLIM-Cool-Metal-Laptop-Cooler/dp/B01G3G3C7M/ref=sr_1_8

d3adf1sh Oct 18, 2021 @ 9:28am

i wouldn't use liquid metal. try either gelid gc-extreme or kingpin cooling kpx they won't dry out or crack and top of the line thermal paste. i've been using gc-extreme for years now and last time i broke down my custom liquid loop to change fluid i wanted to open up the cpu block to check for buildup and the paste was still just as tacky as the day i put it on. and i dropped like 7c when i first put it on compared to AS5 (i'm old school) so now i swear by the stuff. but liquid metal soaks into the metal and has to be replaced regularly. not really something you want on a laptop.

AVATAR Oct 18, 2021 @ 2:58pm

Well I successfully pasted and removed the liquid metal, no leaks during the transportation.
Yes, it changed the die color a bit, but nothing significant happened to laptop or cooling.
I do not recommend liquid metal, as to remove dust properly you still need to unscrew the whole copper heatsink, would take a few minutes more to repaste when necessary.

#10

PUNJABHI COCOROCH Feb 16, 2022 @ 9:55pm

eyeyye

#11

Bad 💀 Motha Feb 16, 2022 @ 10:08pm

Most Gaming or otherwise high-end Laptops generally only push 120-150 watts when the GPU is in heavy usage. Laptop CPUs don't have anywhere near 100+ watts TDP, not even close. They are quite low powered actually.

#12