Is this weird looking laptop case thing normal?

[joaoflu]

What are you looking at? Well, the bottom of the encasing of my laptop G60J, a good but very very noisy gaming laptop from Asus.

The weird thing is that plastic slither of what looks like aluminium is covering the vents which on the laptop would equate the vents that are below the fan. Is this standard on laptops or did some repairman put that in out of some far out wrong way to reduce dirt/as a joke/because he thinks that thing conducts better than air? Or is it standard, is it put in by all laptop designers at factory? Is it better to have that slither for heating purposes or to have air flow go out of the damn laptop through the vents?

 

[TheStu]

Sliver.

Snakes slither, a thin piece of something is a sliver of it.

That is very strange, and not something that I have seen before. Can it be easily removed? Are you experiencing overheating? If you are not, then perhaps it serves a purpose.

 

[dma0991]

There is no performance benefit to having that disc there instead of a direct airflow from the mesh. It might probably be an afterthought that earlier revisions of the laptop had dust clogging issues from the direct intake.

I've once fixed a Dell M1730 which had 3 fans directly beneath a grill. The amount of dust trapped between the heat pipe fins and the blower had the density of a sponge, causing terrible overheating.

It could also be that the disc had a lip at the sides to prevent any other source of hot air from inside the laptop to mix with the cooler airflow that it could get from the outside. The picture isn't clear; if there are no perforations in the middle of the disc, I recommend cutting out the middle while leaving the lip intact.

 

[joaoflu]

Sliver.

Snakes slither, a thin piece of something is a sliver of it.

That is very strange, and not something that I have seen before. Can it be easily removed? Are you experiencing overheating? If you are not, then perhaps it serves a purpose.

Yes, from reading around, Speccy giving me 72-74 degrees celcius on the CPU and 69-71 on the mobo is not acceptable for office use with an extra monitor. Core Temp saying the CPU cores are at 10-15% load just adds insult to injury.

TechPowerUP's GPU-Z saying the gpu is at 79-80 celcius at 0% load just gives you an idea of why this laptop was cheap.

Still, it hasn't failed me yet, and it's been three years or so. Just for a brief period some time ago when it would overheat and shut down but that was because the fan was clogged up. But recently I tried opening it up, cleaned the fans, applied new thermal paste on the cpu, noticed the sliver, closed it up and this time there was no change in temperature.

I've managed to screw one of the central screwdriver too tight in so I can't open it back up again, but I'll just buy another one anyways. The sliver seems like a terrible idea someone at the factory must have had, might explain what's wrong but, even though I'll get another laptop, I can't split test to see if that's the case because of the screwdriver

Notebookcheck has terrible decibels for this laptop in line with my experience. All the time the little bitch yammers about whenever I have something even slightly resource intensive going on, like an open virtualbox, anything that requires a slight minimum of hyperthreading and bam, the fan goes off like a rocket. I just figure I wasted 8 euros for compressed air, I think I'll just give up pussyfooting around and buy another, quieter, laptop.

 

[joaoflu]

There is no performance benefit to having that disc there instead of a direct airflow from the mesh. It might probably be an afterthought that earlier revisions of the laptop had dust clogging issues from the direct intake.

I've once fixed a Dell M1730 which had 3 fans directly beneath a grill. The amount of dust trapped between the heat pipe fins and the blower had the density of a sponge, causing terrible overheating.

It could also be that the disc had a lip at the sides to prevent any other source of hot air from inside the laptop to mix with the cooler airflow that it could get from the outside. The picture isn't clear; if there are no perforations in the middle of the disc, I recommend cutting out the middle while leaving the lip intact.

The sliver of whatever it is is sitting below the heatsink and the fan, for the most part, if that gives you an idea of its purpose, that is if it has a purpose in its weird little universe.

Should have done this tons of time ago, but I'll just buy another one, after researching the innerwebs for quiet cheap laptops.

 

[TheStu]

The sliver of whatever it is is sitting below the heatsink and the fan, for the most part, if that gives you an idea of its purpose, that is if it has a purpose in its weird little universe.

Should have done this tons of time ago, but I'll just buy another one, after researching the innerwebs for quiet cheap laptops.

If there is an in-expensive way to (potentially) solve your problem, then why buy another laptop?

 

[joaoflu]

If there is an in-expensive way to (potentially) solve your problem, then why buy another laptop?

Because these temperatures are 20 degrees above what's probably needed for quietness and from what I read at places like notebookcheck, it's 10 or 12 decibels above quieter laptops: I've grown really annoyed by the fan while I try to work at night, but what do you suggest?

I'm under the impression the whole design of the laptop must be wrong if these temperatures are that high. I also spent 10 euros, plus time going to the shop, buying compressed air for nothing. Any possible solutions would include buying another fan, oiling the fan, I'd splash out more cash for that too. And I doubt that would work, because the fan really needs to cool the cpu, mobo and gpu that all seem to be in the 70 to 80 celcius range in an office environment despite the extended desktop. I've been reading people say their laptop cpu is at 55, though maybe I'm wrong?

 

[TheStu]

Because these temperatures are 20 degrees above what's probably needed for quietness and from what I read at places like notebookcheck, it's 10 or 12 decibels above quieter laptops: I've grown really annoyed by the fan while I try to work at night, but what do you suggest?

I'm under the impression the whole design of the laptop must be wrong if these temperatures are that high. I also spent 10 euros, plus time going to the shop, buying compressed air for nothing. Any possible solutions would include buying another fan, oiling the fan, I'd splash out more cash for that too. And I doubt that would work, because the fan really needs to cool the cpu, mobo and gpu that all seem to be in the 70 to 80 celcius range in an office environment despite the extended desktop. I've been reading people say their laptop cpu is at 55, though maybe I'm wrong?

How much would a new laptop cost?

How much would it cost for you to try dma's suggestion and remove the aluminum plate thingy? Laptop CPUs can take higher temps than desktop ones.

I'm just saying, it's worth trying out before you spend hundreds on a new system is all.

 

[joaoflu]

Sure, but in screwing the middle screw too hard I'm going to have to use a lighter to melt the screw to unscrew it and god knows what that'll do to the rest of the laptop. I think without that I might have tried taking that off but as it is I don't want to be laptopless for the time being. New laptop will cost between 250 and 350 pounds, I might try to melt it when I have the new one running nicely.