Windows 10: Can gaming damage my laptop?

Hi,

I just got a new laptop, the HP Pavilion 15 Power (i5 7300HQ, GTX 1050, 8gb ram). Basically it is for my study but I know it can run games quite well.

Could gaming on my laptop do any damage? I tried GTA V and it worked really good with most settings on high. The only thing ofcourse is that it made fan noise and became warm/hot.

:)

 

I hit my gaming laptop and probably damage something

Hi Kevin,

As a first troubleshooting step, we could try working on the blue screen error by following the steps found
here. The link includes multiple steps, but in your case, you can just do a clean boot and see if it would
help.

If the above step won't work, we highly suggest that you bring your laptop to the manufacturer's service center to have its hardware components checked. The noise that you hear from where it was hit is not a good sign, and could do even more harm to your
laptop if left unchecked.

Cheers.

 

I hit my gaming laptop and probably damage something

The symptoms you have detailed do not point to a software issue, this definitely is a hardware issue . . .

You have damaged your hardware by hitting your laptop, possibly damaged the casing around the CPU fan and also possible bricked one of your hard drive. The only solution is to bring it to the repair shop and see how much hitting your laptop is going to cost
to fix.

 

No, it can not/should not.

But what can happen is that the lifespan of your laptop can be degraded a bit, because of all the extra heat generated when playing some really system hungry games (both CPU and GPU almost maxing out all the time). How ever, some occasional gaming won't kill the laptop, especially if it's some more lightweight ones.


All the heating issues caused by heavy loads are protected by software controlled fan rotation increase, automatic under clocking and voltage decrease of both GPU and CPU (also called thermal throttling) , to work around too high temps, where the fan can't cool the hardware fast enough.

Don't worry about gaming on a laptop, but if you ever find yourself playing a lot, then I would recommend purchasing a proper desktop gaming rig for that purpose and use the laptop for what it was originally meant to be used for in your case, studying. You get so much better performance (tens to hundreds of times more) for less money when you have a proper gaming desktop computer.

Hope this helped to answer your question. *Smile

 

"Could gaming on my laptop do any damage?"
Short term, no. Long term, yes. Standard use not just gaming.

Mine 4 yo has a fan that is now at 75% of max speed(it has been cleaned), and a Keyboard with some key switches damaged by being only very slightly warmer. Shows the poor quality of the Keyboard rather than anything else. Small fans have a shortish life.
Both are going to be replaced. It is still well within allowed temperatures.

CPU/GPU will have thermal protection to clock things down if too hot.

 

Thanks for your comment slicendice and Helmut.

I think I play average 30 min to 1 (max 2) hour a day on my laptop, definitely not like 4 to 8 hours in a row. I play only a few games on my laptop because of the mods and I have the same games on my Xbox.

So, 30 min to 1 hour a day shouldn't be problem, right? Oh and I will upgrade this laptop soon from 8gb to 16gb and remove my HDD to a SSD 500 gb. (I have a 256gb SSD and now a 1tb HDD where also GTA V is on). Will both upgrades improve the performance/gaming on this laptop?

 

What do you mean cereberus? Destroying my keyboard with gaming? I use a Xbox controller when I play games on a laptop or PC.

 

You're welcome!

I doubt the increase of RAM from 8 to 16GB will improve gaming performance by much. Your GPU is the one requiring a lot of VRAM for textures. 8GB VRAM is more than enough on a laptop.

Swapping the HDD for an SSD will most likely only improve loading times. What however is important, is that your system drive is fast and stay as empty as possible. Windows needs this to function properly.

 

Hi!
I have a laptop that is 18 years old now, still going strong. The first years it had Windows 98, 2000 and i used to do a lot of gaming (MS Flight Simulator, version 3 or 4 ? ). Later I was experimenting with Linux, doing some kernel builds and sometime they didnt turn out well so my CPU temp went crazy 80-90 degrees Celcius.

Conclusion: A well built laptop with proper cooling should be very sturdy. Mine is a Compaq Armada E500. Now I have a MSI GT72 with an extremely well cooling system that never gets hot and has a hardly noticeable fan noise.

Regards...

 

Bought my First True Gaming Laptop for Christmas, HP Omen 15_ce019dx model, and while i don't game on it all day like my Asus G11CD-K Desktop, i only play light games mostly on laptop, sometimes Need For Speed Most Wanted off and on, Pinball FX3, sometimes Secondlife MMO game, only played on it a lot when Condo heat was out, and was too cold to be down in the room with Desktop

But i monitor temps, and such so think sturdy enough for gaming off and on, certainly probably not 8-12 hours like i do on Desktop machine lol

 

If the cooling is adequate and the temperatures of the computer reaches a stable point below "dangerous" temps you can use your laptop 24/7/375 if you want. Every computer I have and had, reach a stable temperature eventually. If the temperature on vital components (CPU, memory, disks etc) stop rising in say two hours then you can run it as long as you want, 10, 100, 1000 hours don't matter. A normally built system will always reach an equilibrium.

 

My Newer HP Omen handles gaming fine, sure gets a little warm if gaming for an extended period, but supposedly it's designed and marketed for Gaming, sure I don't run it 12+ hours like Desktop, but I could if I had to.

 

The cooling fan will spin faster sucking in more dust and you may hit the keys too hard risking keyboard damage in your frustration when playing games.

 

@Westland1940 - HP's are infamous for overall, starting out well with their cooling solutions; however the cooling assemblies they use tend to break down fairly quickly.

Years ago, we would order HP CTO's without RAM or Hard Disks that would have the onboard nVidia chipsets; however we've a different vendor now, IBM/Lenovo.

When we were using HP, we would work with a specialty manufacturer to create a non-OEM variant of the HP cooling assembly designed by our own engineers each time we placed an order, and while we still have a relationship with our vendor to provide us with custom designs of parts we may need, we no longer obtain the re-tooled versions of the HP cooling assemblies we designed, and at this point, all of our own designs for HP Laptops' cooling assemblies would be for models that are now outdated.

Custom parts manufacturers are available online, but they can be difficult to find. For professional reasons, we can't post specifics about the one we use, and most will only work with large orders or businesses. There are exceptions, so please feel free to run any names by us in a PM should you wish to make an inquiry about one you find that will fulfill small orders.

So, Yes, playing games can "eventually" cause damage to most laptops, not just HP. What we miss about HP is that they were actually really easy to maintain compared to our CTO IBM/Lenovo's, and in all honesty, replacing the cooling assembly in HP's is surprisingly easy in our own opinion; however we always recommend using a professional A+ certified technician for any maintenance, and not to do the maintenance yourself.

If your laptop is relatively new, it's also possible the cooling assembly you have is just not in great shape out of the box, so you may want to consider getting it replaced.

We always recommend maxing out RAM to full capacity with the highest speed RAM that is compatible with any laptop; however there's a tradeoff that varies significantly between hardware builds; especially CPU vs. GPU, and that is that while CPU heat levels will go down with more RAM, it's not always a significant change while at times the added RAM will also achieve some additional heat as well. For past HP's, where the RAM was installable from the bottom, and fairly far away from both the CPU and onboard GPU chipsets, maximum RAM that was configured at the highest available speed would often even out the temperatures nicely, but also bear in mind, we've never used AMD CPU's and have always used Intel CPU's exclusively. In short, we've little experience to share when it comes to AMD CPU driven models, but we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that upgrading to maximum possible RAM is more often helpful than not helpful to at least allowing for some lowering of temperature during operation. Something is always better than nothing.

Laptops do heat up pretty fast; even for us running things like AutoCAD and other 3D applications, so having a fully functional cooling system is always of paramount importantance.

One thing to also try, go into your Power Configuration, and set the cooling fan to "Active" instead of "Passive" to keep it always on, and invest in an extended cell battery to make up the difference in power consumption. Anker makes a great series of extended cell batteries that are compatible with a vast array of HP laptops.

Best of Luck,

SLI - IT-IS Team