Does the gaming laptop freeze for a minute every 20 minutes during gameplay?
Does the gaming laptop freeze for a minute every 20 minutes during gameplay?
The gaming laptop experiences a brief freeze lasting about a minute every twenty minutes while playing. I recorded one of these freeze incidents in the HWiNFO log during gameplay. The issue appears on line 794, with a noticeable gap of one minute where no logs are generated before it resumes. This device had also previously failed to power on properly, so I had to take it to a repair shop. They replaced some components and provided a new power cord, but I’m uncertain if this is connected to the same problem.
From the logs after the freeze, I observed P-core thermal throttling. CPU temperatures were also elevated before the freeze, around 90°C. It seems cleaning the laptop's internal components from dust and ensuring the cooling pad is functioning properly would help. Avoid placing the laptop on soft surfaces like a blanket.
I've never come across any trustworthy laptop tech or repair shop that disassembles a laptop for fixes without cleaning it first. If they were just swapping a drive or adding memory, that's fine. But when dealing with a broken machine, only a homeless PC technician would take it apart and not cause further damage before working on repairs.
Thank you both! I just captured some screenshots of the sensors right now after playing a game for a short time. I’m noticing that several temperatures are elevated—anything significant to observe?
Well, for one thing, not sure what you're playing or how many other things you have open or running while playing, but you have VERY little memory available. You're using 91% of your 16GB of physical memory and 97.8% of your virtual memory. This is very unusual unless you're playing a VERY memory intensive game AND have some other fairly memory intensive tasks running at the same time.
There's definitely core thermal throttling going on, because it states it right there in your first screen shot. Your CPU package temp, which is generally equal to your highest core temp, shows 97°C which is way too hot. There is absolutely something going on with a lack of airflow or cooling capacity. Are your fans running? In the BIOS are there any settings for managing cooling that allow you to change from active to passive cooling and if so, what is it set to? It should be set to active cooling. Passive cooling will throttle rather than run the fan up to full speed. On your device you may possibly have two cooling fans, one for the CPU and one for the graphics adapter. Make certain one or both are running and that they are ramping up to full speed. You should certainly be able to hear them easily.
And actually, in the second screenshot you can see that it's gone as high as 101°C. This is bad. This is very likely why it's doing what it's doing. Either there is a fan issue, or they didn't re-paste the heatsinks while they were in there or something is seriously misconfigured. I'd also check the BIOS and if there is a configuration setting for enabling PBO/PBO2 (Precision boost overdrive, not to be confused with the default Precision boost) I would make sure it is disabled.
Also, in your Windows power management settings, make sure the plan is set to Balanced and not High performance. Then, go into the advanced power plan settings and click on processor power management and make sure the minimum is set to like 5% and the maximum to 100%.
Check in the BIOS to see if there are settings for Cool N Quiet and if so, enable it. While in there also check for and if available set as indicated the following settings. Core CPPC Enabled. CPPC preferred cores enabled. Advanced/Global C-states enabled. Precision boost and XFR2, if available, should be enabled but the automatic overclocking of Precision boost overdrive should be disabled especially on any device with cooling problems.
If none of this helps I'd take it back to whoever "repaired" it and tell them there is a problem and it is not working correctly, assuming you did not have overheating problems prior to them working on it.
Thank you for your feedback. I'll review all these aspects carefully. The freezing began after I returned the item from repair, which is unusual regarding memory usage—I was mainly using Space Marines 2, Steam, HWiNFO, and a couple of Chrome tabs. I confirmed both fans are running in Asus' Armoury Crate, but it's possible they weren't operating at full speed, so I'll consider those options.
I'm also thinking about whether the old paste might have lost contact with some components during the repair process. Reapplying paste could potentially resolve the issue.
Thanks again!