- Aug 22, 2006
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I've got a g71gx bestbuy model, still a little confused on what the specific complete model number for this one is because there seems to be a lot of configurations, that has served me pretty well over the last two years. There are a few specific quirks such as a double typing keyboard that there doesn't seem to be any real fix or or a GPU that runs too hot and originally used to shut the system down randomly. Now if it gets too hot after a few hours of gaming it drops the framerate to unplayable until I turn it off and let it cool for a few moments.
To try to help this, I finally cracked it open and completely disassembled it to replace the thermal compound on the GPU, northbridge and the CPU. It was probably the most difficult to clean thermal paste I've ever seen before.
The only other modification I've made is that I put 12gb of ram in it, even though there are varying reports of success with this, it appears to work and utilize the memory fine.
What I'm curious about now, because I'm still idling at 45C on the CPU and 62C on the GPU, is if anyone has any experience with a mod like I found here. Did he just buy some copper ram heatsinks and use the pull off adhesive to stick them to the aluminum heatsink and copper heatsinks or is there something more elaborate I'm missing? Does that actually help to dissipate the heat enough to make a difference? I'm worried they could just fall off and go rattling around against my mobo.
Also, contrary to some of the stuff on the web, the GPU isn't soldered to the mobo but I haven't found one actual reference to a usable replacement/upgrade for the existing GPU. Don't get me wrong, it still plays games like Skyrim in middle/high quality with no issues beyond the one I reference above about dropping frames over the longterm, but I would like to upgrade it to get better performance. I'd also like to dump the 1440 screen and get a 1920 but I've only found one company who lists a replacement and they haven't returned my contact yet.
As for a CPU upgrade, I've read that quad core would actually bog it down, has anyone done anything like this? For this model, compared to replacing the GPU, a CPU change would be a piece of cake. However, I'm also worried about the cooling since it's already warm with what it has in it already.
Does anyone have any experience with modifications/upgrades on this laptop model? Sorry to sort of shotgun the variety of topics but there's a lot I wish I could get going on this thing. It's been good so I don't really want to shell out the moola to replace it with a brand new machine but...
To try to help this, I finally cracked it open and completely disassembled it to replace the thermal compound on the GPU, northbridge and the CPU. It was probably the most difficult to clean thermal paste I've ever seen before.
The only other modification I've made is that I put 12gb of ram in it, even though there are varying reports of success with this, it appears to work and utilize the memory fine.
What I'm curious about now, because I'm still idling at 45C on the CPU and 62C on the GPU, is if anyone has any experience with a mod like I found here. Did he just buy some copper ram heatsinks and use the pull off adhesive to stick them to the aluminum heatsink and copper heatsinks or is there something more elaborate I'm missing? Does that actually help to dissipate the heat enough to make a difference? I'm worried they could just fall off and go rattling around against my mobo.
Also, contrary to some of the stuff on the web, the GPU isn't soldered to the mobo but I haven't found one actual reference to a usable replacement/upgrade for the existing GPU. Don't get me wrong, it still plays games like Skyrim in middle/high quality with no issues beyond the one I reference above about dropping frames over the longterm, but I would like to upgrade it to get better performance. I'd also like to dump the 1440 screen and get a 1920 but I've only found one company who lists a replacement and they haven't returned my contact yet.
As for a CPU upgrade, I've read that quad core would actually bog it down, has anyone done anything like this? For this model, compared to replacing the GPU, a CPU change would be a piece of cake. However, I'm also worried about the cooling since it's already warm with what it has in it already.
Does anyone have any experience with modifications/upgrades on this laptop model? Sorry to sort of shotgun the variety of topics but there's a lot I wish I could get going on this thing. It's been good so I don't really want to shell out the moola to replace it with a brand new machine but...