Hello all,

I bought a used HP Elitebook 8460P off ebay a few days back. I received it today, I am still waiting on the SSD I ordered for it, but I went ahead and installed Windows to get the free Windows 10 upgrade. After that I installed 14.2 and everything is working flawless. I did change the CPU to a I7-2720QM quad core processor. I am a little concerned because the CPU's idle temp is around 46-50c but the max load temp gets as high as 91c which is just below the threshold of 100c. I do have CPU frequency scaling working correctly and I did disable turbo boost. The temps are the same in windows. From what I can find googling these temps are close to other uses with my configuration, but I didn't see anyone else hitting above 85c. One thing I did discover from opening up the laptop is that the CPU and ATI Radeon HD 6470M share the same heatsink which I believe is causing the extra heat build up. This is a problem because I can't run programs like handbrake or build packages in parallel. Does anyone have any tips or hints on anything I could try to get these temps down. Right now I am trying to figure out how to change the power plan of the ATI card.

These temps might even be normal, I have just never really owned a laptop with this much power so I don't really know what "normal" is.

I don't have one of those, but after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS20SlzjrmY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Crz4efBpf8, all I can think of is to ask if you cleaned and re-applied the thermal paste on the Radeon chip as well as the new cpu? Did you blow out the fan and heat exchanger fins as shown in the 2nd video?

I actually watched those videos. Yeah I did all that, I am going to try to reapply the paste to the GPU again since its running almost 20c higher than the CPU. That doesn't seem normal to me, but I can't find any real specific information on the internet about that particular video card temps. I did see that the GPU has a much higher threshold than the CPU (120c is the max). So perhaps that is normal, but google is not turning up much. I think the biggest reason the is happening is the fact that I upgraded the CPU from an I5-2520 to an I7-2720 Quad. I checked over at HP forums and they said it is supported but given the fact that I went from an 35w to 45w CPU and two extra cores the heatsink was probably not designed to take the extra heat.

Ok I figured out how to put the GPU in its lowest power state but it didn't help with max temps. Oh well, this laptop was never configured for a quad core. I guess I just can't push it or I can put the old CPU back in.

Sorry that I cannot offer any help, but I tend to agree that if it was not configured (i.e. manufactured) for a quad core, then adding the extra thermal source without modifying the thermal sink would obviously result in higher temperatures.

FWIW, I have no i7 machines, but I do have some i3s and they all tend to run hotter than I would like as well (up to sutained 90c at times!). I have cleaned the heatsinks and checked the fans, but I found a curious note on the Intel site in reply to a user with the same processor also running 90c - Intel says it is a "normal" temperature...

Not sure how that might relate to an i7.

The i7-2720 running at 45W might cause some increase in heat.

What kind of thermal grease are you using?
Personally I use Arctic Silver 5, and it hasn't failed me yet.
You should try to apply it as thin as you can.

Windows will also run hotter than Slackware. Always.

My Core 2 Extreme x9000 is rated at 44W 105C and it normally runs at about 49C. My fan doesn't spin up until around 70C and that doesn't happen very often. I actually just got it to the other day while compressing a 4GB archive and I had about 6 other things running at the same time. But that is on my Slackware laptop. On my dual boot laptop (Core 2 Duo T7520 35W 100C) when I run Windows 7, the fan will spin up while it is sitting there idle. Literally nothing running, completely idle and the fan will spin up every couple of minutes.

I used Prolimatech PK-3. I've used Artic Silver 5 for years but my tube finally ran out after 6 years .

The default governor in slackware kernel is ondemand, which means the freq will increase only when needed so..
If you want full power set it to performance, if you want low power set it to powersave, if you want manual control set it to userspace.
My AMD normally burns at 52-60 but unless it's compiling something, I like to keep it all the way down like this:

You may want to run cpufreq-info to see the list of supported governors and frequency steps.

Another option is to just limit the upper-end of the CPU to see if it leads to calmer temps.

Another thing to check is the heatsink. I know you already said it was cleaned out, but if it was just cleaned with compressed air, it could still have a film on the fins that wasn't touched with the compressed air, which can prevent proper heat transfer. As long as you can remove the fan, it might be worth soaking the heatsink for a bit in a decent cleaner (I typically use 409) and then rinse it off with water.

Good point.

Myself, I don't go near any of my PCs with cleaners. I will use alcohol on my heatsink and CPU, other than that I use a paintbrush and my air compressor. Canned air can can produce moisture and in turn leave a film, not that an air compressor cant but if properly maintained and correct filters a compressor is much better. For the tough jobs or if I receive something that has a sticky spot on it I use electronics cleaner. But that is only as needed and in the worst case scenario.

This is just stupid but I got a good laugh from it. The bottom of the laptop has cut outs for air by the heatsink so I sat the laptop on the floor right on top of my air conditioning vent. That kept it around 61c under full load lol.

Daedra --

Standard Laptop design which places the intake vents are on the bottom of the Laptop where they're easily blocked seems silly to me.

Not that I can think of a better way to do it ...

I once had a laptop that overheated under load and the only way to keep it kool was to set it on a laptop chiller pad.

I always use a chiller pad now even if I don't plug it in ( plugging in an additional 5V USB load on an already-overheating LT seems silly too )

So no, what you did is not silly, you simply set up an ad-hoc, super-duper, deluxe laptop chiller pad

-- kjh