Hugo Cowan
Member
I love PCSpecialist, I recommend it to anyone looking to buy a windows laptop who wants to get the most for their money. I have bought a laptop from them myself that had no issues.
Last night a friend received the Optimus VII laptop that I had recommended to him, then gave it to me to set up.
I ran a few benchmark tests to see how the temperatures were on the 960m - a graphics card that I have owned myself, and know how cool it runs (W230SS laptop bought from here). I ran a loop of heaven 4.0 (a graphics benchmark), and saw temperatures up to 91C. I am used to seeing between 68-75C with this GPU, not 91C. Not good.
I decided to open it up and have a look at the thermal paste - I wasn't expecting to find anything obvious. I was very wrong.
What you are seeing there is a long rectangle of plastic that had been left between the GPU and the heat-spreader, covering the length of the GPU and going straight through the centre. You can see on the die where the plastic was covering, as it has absolutely no thermal paste on that area. After replacing the paste (and the plastic) with MX-4, I am getting much more acceptable temperatures well under 80C. Much better.
The plastic appears to be for placing the thermal paste (perhaps a thermal pad that softens when heated) onto the cooling solution, before peeling it off and applying it to the GPU. This clearly did not happen.
I have posted this here to give an example of how thermal paste jobs are not always done properly, and how - in this case, the cooling solution may have harmed the GPU if left like this, as 99% of laptop owners would have done. This is not a common case with PCSpecialist, but it quite obviously can happen. This is not acceptable, I did not expect this from a company that has only done well for me so far.
[UPDATE]
PC Specialist got back to my friend earlier today and apologised for the incident. They promised to look into the issue and even gave an extended warranty as recompense. We are both happy with the response, I expected nothing less from this company.
Last night a friend received the Optimus VII laptop that I had recommended to him, then gave it to me to set up.
I ran a few benchmark tests to see how the temperatures were on the 960m - a graphics card that I have owned myself, and know how cool it runs (W230SS laptop bought from here). I ran a loop of heaven 4.0 (a graphics benchmark), and saw temperatures up to 91C. I am used to seeing between 68-75C with this GPU, not 91C. Not good.
I decided to open it up and have a look at the thermal paste - I wasn't expecting to find anything obvious. I was very wrong.
What you are seeing there is a long rectangle of plastic that had been left between the GPU and the heat-spreader, covering the length of the GPU and going straight through the centre. You can see on the die where the plastic was covering, as it has absolutely no thermal paste on that area. After replacing the paste (and the plastic) with MX-4, I am getting much more acceptable temperatures well under 80C. Much better.
The plastic appears to be for placing the thermal paste (perhaps a thermal pad that softens when heated) onto the cooling solution, before peeling it off and applying it to the GPU. This clearly did not happen.
I have posted this here to give an example of how thermal paste jobs are not always done properly, and how - in this case, the cooling solution may have harmed the GPU if left like this, as 99% of laptop owners would have done. This is not a common case with PCSpecialist, but it quite obviously can happen. This is not acceptable, I did not expect this from a company that has only done well for me so far.
[UPDATE]
PC Specialist got back to my friend earlier today and apologised for the incident. They promised to look into the issue and even gave an extended warranty as recompense. We are both happy with the response, I expected nothing less from this company.
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