Zephyrus G14 2020 (3050ti, R7 5800hs) hovers around 90c cpu on light load, and 95c gpu while playing games it should easily run

[s_k]

I recently bought a 2021 Asus Roger Zephyrus G14 laptop. 
AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS with Radeon Graphics, 16gb of ram and an RTX3050Ti. 

Though I am only using it on 'proper' surfaces (not my lap) it seems to be runny very hot, to the point where you can't long term touch the area above the keyboard (55c, 131f). Ambient 27c/81f.
According to both Asus' software and Speccy the graphics card reaches temperatures of 88c, 190f. Speccy doesn't see the sensor of the processor but the Asus utility measures 95c, 203f. 
This is when playing, in this case, Eurotruck Simulator 2 with high settings. It runs it extremely smoothly at 120-130fps. Ultra settings are 60-70fps. The laptop itself seems to have no issues. 

The laptop has been used for a little bit of chatting and social media for the last hour or so, processor still hovers around 90c, videocard is down to 55 as it's now of course using the Radeon graphics.
If I manually set the fan speed to '100%' at everything about 70c, temperatures still don't sink much below 90c, often sticking to 92-93, even though there's no intensive tasks that I can see. 
Funny enough the 'windows' fan control setting seems to spin up the fans faster than Asus 'performance' setting. Appears Asus isn't too worried about 90c+, but I'd still like your input.

So, how hot is normal for a laptop like this? I can imagine the cooling paste is still 2021, but that would be a reason to return it to have it repasted (it came with a 2 year warranty).

Tips?

Screenshot is taken just after shutting down EuroTruck Simulator 2

[Qyygle]

Have you confirmed there's nothing still running in the background? It could be a rogue program or windows issue, as your screenshot is showing 15% CPU usage at 3.7ghz. The GPU is also showing 100% utilization (you said the game was already closed when you took this screen yes?) can you confirm that Armory Crate is reporting correctly here?

It could even be Armory Crate itself. ASUS is pretty well known for making crappy implementations of it. You may want to try unintalling all ASUS software, and fresh installing it from the latest versions on the ASUS site. Use HWInfo to monitor CPU and GPU power draw. On idle, you should see very low numbers for both (almost zero for the GPU, 2-8Wish I imagine for CPU)

If you can confirm all software/Windows issues are not the cause, then it might be a heatsink issue.

 

Did you get this used, or from a store? 

It could be the thermal paste application has degraded or needs to be replaced. I think the 2021 G14's used liquid metal for the CPU, which may have lost contact or leaked. 90* on idle is not normal for this CPU, you should either get it repaired under warranty if that's an option or if you're confident, repaste it yourself.

 

Be very careful with liquid metal however. If it has leaked, ASUS's gasket and sealing may have prevented it from causing actual damage in the immediate area around the CPU die, but opening it up will be very messy. Leaking any of the LM to the surrounding board can cause damage and fry components the next time you turn it on. You could re-do a LM for the CPU, or use standard thermal paste instead if you don't want to deal with LM in the future. PTM7950 pads could be another option, they seem to do very well in laptop installs.

[s_k]

Game could've been minimised when taking this screenshot, honestly. Can't remember for sure whether I took it right after shutting down the game (so with the temps still up) or minimised before shutting it down. I'll re-evaluate with HWinfo and Skyrim (about to play, another not particularly demanding game). 
I did try to run it without the Armoury Crate software. Also because of 'sleep' issues (TL;DR: Sleep is just not a thing on this laptop).
It seems coolest though when the software is set to 'windows'. Which indeed would also allow me to just uninstall it. Might as well. 

I got it used, but from a reliable store with a 2 year warranty so I can always send it back for repair. Obviously not going to re-apply liquid metal myself if there's still a warranty. I'll report back after a test!
Can you tell me what would be normal temperatures and if there's a way to confirm this? I might have to 'prove' that there's an issue, of course.

Cheers!

[s_k]

Here's two screenshots after an hour of playing skyrim (still minimised in the background).
GPU seems fine on these. Will try again with a slightly heavier title soon. 
CPU seems to peak a bit but then it's AMD, I guess this is still within spec, right? 
I do notice that when I close Skyrim, GPU temperature goes down to 0 minimum and current switches between 0 and 54. Seems like an error to me? Am I correct assuming it misreads/doesn't read because the 3050 is disabled when not gaming?
Peak power consumption of the GPU is 85 watts, that's above spec. Does it make sense that it would do that playing a 12 year old game? 
 

[s_k]

9 hours ago, Qyygle said:

It could even be Armory Crate itself. ASUS is pretty well known for making crappy implementations of it.

You don't say, eh?
(Figured I'd remove this too, I don't want anything messing with my audio :D). 

[Qyygle]

CPU peaking at around 90-100 is normal for both intel and AMD, that's just how boosting works. Once it hits the peak for a while, it should drop down to it's long term power limit, and maintain temps closer to 70-80's depending on OEM implementation of heatsink and power limits.

 

Your temps in skyrim seem fine to me. Power consumption for a GPU is often just going to go to the max of whatever the manufacturer set, even when playing older games, unless you FPS limit, or intentionally undervolt the GPU. If you have Skyrim's FPS unlocked (I think unmodded it doesn't go over 60 due to physics bugs), the GPU will pull up to it's max power to push FPS as high as it can.

 

Once a game or program that uses the GPU is closed, laptops that have optimus or graphics switching (forget what AMD calls it) will no longer register the GPU on HWInfo or other monitoring programs most times. If optimus is working properly, the GPU is effectively asleep and won't be drawing power. In fact, by having HWInfo or other software 'pinging' it for occasional updates (hence why you see 0, then the actual 54, then 0 again) you can have worse battery life, so if you're on battery, it can be best to turn off HWInfo or other such programs.

 

If your temps have gone down after uninstalling armory crate, it could indeed be a faulty version that came with your machine. You could try reinstalling from ASUS's driver site, or if you don't care for it, just run without it.

[s_k]

Oh it didn't 'come' with my machine. First thing I do when buying a computer is reinstalling it (both to get rid of the crap it comes with, and to partition the hard drive).
It was just the latest version on the Asus site. 
I don't need the software at all so I'm happy without it. I thought it would give me some control over the fan but Windows seems to do that just fine. 
Is there a benchmark I can run to test this in a more synthetic way? 

[Qyygle]

To test the fan settings or just your heat/thermal system in general?

If you want to stress test, running Heaven benchmark with Prime95 at the same time would probably do it.

 

If temperatures don't go past 100* CPU and maybe 80-85* for GPU, it's probably fine. Especially if temps go back down to 40-50 range once you kill both tasks.

 

[s_k]

To test the thermal/heat indeed. The fans sound healthy and get up to very reasonable speeds so I'm not worried about those. 
I'll give heaven and prime95 a shot now. 
Temps seem to top out at 87c for the GPU. HWifo reads 88.4. CPU topped out at 95.4. 
They drop within 10 seconds to 70c. I guess all systems normal?

Weirdly, the 'modes' for fan button still works, even though the software is uninstalled. I guess that button also allows the windows performance settings to change?
I just checked the processes running and there's still a ton of armoury/asus stuff running even though I uninstalled it. Oh Asus... Any idea how to get rid of that? Happy to reinstall again, but if there's a faster way :D.  

Going to test furmark just for comparison, it's weird to me that it seems to get hotter in games than in a benchmark that's supposed to crunch the GPU.
Furmark too tops out at 87. I think we are cool. Can you tell it's my first gaming laptop? Haha. I'm used to building gaming PC's that don't break sweat, all of my laptops were Dell Latitudes (from the D610 to the 7440). Currently using a Macbook Air M1, so I'm just not used to laptops that are hotter than I can comfortably touch. 

Thanks for the support! Much appreciated!

[Qyygle]

Yeah, dropping to 70* for long term load is fine.

You can delete them one by one if you want, it'll take a while I imagine. Clean install of windows would be faster, but if you've got docs and other things already installed, it's a bit of a pain.

 

Fan/performance modes are sometimes baked into BIOS or firmware levels, so if you still have control of them via the mode hotkey, that's great. 

 

One thing that might be causing the higher GPU load in games compared against synthetic is possibly how dynamic boosting for laptops works. (I forget if AMD has their own special name for this as well) Basically, the GPU has a stated max wattage, but it can also pull more power if the CPU also isn't being fully powered. Think of it like a shared 10-15W that can go either to the CPU or GPU. If the CPU isn't pulling this amount (like under a stress test such as Prime95 or other benchmark), the GPU can use that power to boost higher than it normally would.

 

Some laptops do this, some don't, I don't recall off the top of my head how the G14's usually did. You can reference reviewers like Jarod's Tech, who do more detailed comparisons of power settings, power usage, etc. for more info on this.

Gaming laptops are weird cookies, and so much depends on the manufacturer and their implementation of cooling, BIOS limits, power modes, control software, etc. etc. that a lot of times, just reading the specsheet is nearly useless.

 

[s_k]

I do like reinstalling windows, it's a fun thing to 'get right' so it's not the end of the world. It's just weird, there's nothing left in the apps list, and the search function finds nothing, yet taskmanager shows twelve (!) executables running. I could remove the files of course, and see what happens. Whole thing may not boot anymore, who knows. I'll give it some thought, haha. It runs fine as is but I may get annoyed with it and reinstall windows. 
I seem to remember that in my previous uninstall of the Asus software the hotkey didn't work anymore, but maybe that was juist the little GUI element it throws up on the screen. 
Your explanation about the dynamic load does sound logical. Weirdly (and I really can't explain this) playing Skyrim for 2 hours it didn't get anywhere near the temperatures I got first. Completely baffled about that honestly. I did skim through Jarod's video when I researched this laptop, but will give it another look. 

There's no denying that putting this much power into a laptop is a compromise, I was well aware of that and am happy with how the thing performs for its purpose (gaming). For other stuff well... It's not an M1 mac, if I may be so bold. I thought with Intel/AMD having caught up it may run the Adobe suite as well as the Macs do but nah, optimalisation is a thing there. But for gaming, it's about on par with my 2019 2700x/32g/1660ti gaming system that I am now selling. Not bad, completely happy with that. I did however want to make sure that it didn't get hot to the point where it would start desoldering its own components (remember core2duo era laptops with dedicated graphics?). But it appears that it's working as intended. 
I barely looked at the specsheet honestly, I mostly just checked reviews, also for the later models in the series, and people seemed generally impressed with the build quality and performance of this machine. It has to be said, it's a 'lenovo T-series' solid laptop. Asus really did a great job with it. Keyboard, screen and sound are not too shabby either. But then it was not exactly cheap when new, so they better!