Why are my temps so high?

NikoBellic1243 · January 5, 2020

So, yesterday, I bought the Dell G7 laptop with RTX 2060 6 GB DDRM and Intel I7-9750H. I set up the laptop, deleted Mcafee and installed HWmoniter and all of a sudden my fans went wild. They went silent in about a minute but would start up again randomly. I looked at my temps and the max value for my CPU was 91 C. FREAKING 91.

So I thought maybe I should run a demanding game to see how the machine performs. I installed and opened GTA V. The first weird thing I noticed was that the movement of my curser wasn't smooth. I went to the settings and the game had set its settings to the lowest possible so I thought that maybe it hadn't recognized my GPU so I restarted the game and everything looked fine in the settings. I changed some settings and ran about 3 benchmarks, minimized the game, checked my CPU temps and the highs were in FREAKING 90s. I mean, what the heck? Surprisingly, even with such high temps, the benchmarks showed consistent 60 FPS with occasional dips to mid-50s.

I shut down the game and downloaded Cinebench. I ran five stress tests in a row and the temps start out with low 90's but soon drop to low 80's. My average score was 2725 pts.

So, what do you guys think? I only have around 14 days to return it so I'd like to find out if there are any issues as soon as possible. I really love this machine and saved for a long time to be able to afford it. I wouldn't want all that to go to waste.

Tacos4all · January 5, 2020

Laptops are always going to have a problem with cooling, that's a given. But modern Intel CPU's, and that one in particular have a max operating temp of 100C. It seems high since only up until 4 years ago, Intel were the "cooler' chips while AMD was known for their space heaters. So long as you're not hitting the max 100C, it is perfectly safe to operate at those temps. Some tips though that may help with cooling is to angle the bottom half of the laptop, meaning the end that connects to the screen is elevated above the end where your trackpad is. This helps heat move in its natural direction, upwards. Also ensure the vents have room to breathe. Laptops nowadays are going for a slim design which also means the feet of the laptio provide very little room. So for light use while traveling, it works great, but for hardcore gaming, you're going to want to figure out a way to allow the vents to breathe.

As far as performance in GTAV, that is quite a demanding game and I have noticed stuttering in my rig as well which you can see in my signature, it's no slouch but HDD's do seem to give me issue with this game, so if you can squeeze it into your SSD, I'd recommend that. Otherwise, some laptops allow you to easily swap out the drives, and I would highly recommend tossing in a 1TB SSD as they're the same size (2.5"), you can usually find them on sale various times throughout the year.

One other thing in regards to cooling, you can try going into the BIOS to see if you can adjust the fan profiles to something more aggressive so it doesn't let the CPU heat up so much before turning on the fans.

Mister Woof · January 5, 2020

Every relatively portable gaming laptop I've ever used has run incredibly hot and on the verge of throttling during use.

It's normal. You can't have it all, and laptops are a glaring example of that.

This is why gaming laptops are kinda ehhhh

NikoBellic1243 · January 17, 2020

On 1/5/2020 at 5:49 PM, Tacos4all said:

Laptops are always going to have a problem with cooling, that's a given. But modern Intel CPU's, and that one in particular have a max operating temp of 100C. It seems high since only up until 4 years ago, Intel were the "cooler' chips while AMD was known for their space heaters. So long as you're not hitting the max 100C, it is perfectly safe to operate at those temps. Some tips though that may help with cooling is to angle the bottom half of the laptop, meaning the end that connects to the screen is elevated above the end where your trackpad is. This helps heat move in its natural direction, upwards. Also ensure the vents have room to breathe. Laptops nowadays are going for a slim design which also means the feet of the laptio provide very little room. So for light use while traveling, it works great, but for hardcore gaming, you're going to want to figure out a way to allow the vents to breathe.

As far as performance in GTAV, that is quite a demanding game and I have noticed stuttering in my rig as well which you can see in my signature, it's no slouch but HDD's do seem to give me issue with this game, so if you can squeeze it into your SSD, I'd recommend that. Otherwise, some laptops allow you to easily swap out the drives, and I would highly recommend tossing in a 1TB SSD as they're the same size (2.5"), you can usually find them on sale various times throughout the year.

One other thing in regards to cooling, you can try going into the BIOS to see if you can adjust the fan profiles to something more aggressive so it doesn't let the CPU heat up so much before turning on the fans.

I apologize for the late reply, but thanks a lot for taking the time to give a long and concise answer. It's people like you who makes this community so great. Cheers!