# Are ssd's in 'danger' when computers crash?



## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

I've been having problems with my laptop for about a year now. I've tried so many things in an effort to work out what's going on. In the end, I pretty much found that it would crash as soon as it hit 70 degrees C. I've changed the thermal paste on a couple of occasions, in a bid to keep temperatures as cool as possible, and now even use the laptop with the back removed. Anyway, now the computer seems to crash at 50 degrees. I've had about six crashes today, and all I've been doing is surfing the net. 

Apart from the inconvenience of having to reboot the system, Im really worried about the ssd's (I have two installed). Of course, this would be a real issue with mechanical drives, but is there ever going to be an issue with solid state?

Cheers


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

Just to add, I've only come across a couple of articles on this and both say that they are actually pretty volatile.


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

My thought is anything electronic really doesn't like heat. Have you tried using a cooler pad?

Not so much rec'ing this one, but anything similar?


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

Sorry, it won't let me link it. Let's see if this will work.




__





laptop cooling pad - Google Search






www.google.com


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

I've used them with some success. Still gets hot but not as bad.


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

dzilizzi said:


> My thought is anything electronic really doesn't like heat. Have you tried using a cooler pad?
> 
> Not so much rec'ing this one, but anything similar?



Thanks! I actually run the laptop upside-down, with the back off. So there is no heat buildup at the bottom of the computer. I also have the screen open and the fans running at 6200rpm, to shoot out excess heat from around the gfx and processor. When idle, I can see temps as low as 30 degrees, which I don't think is bad for a 9-year-old laptop. The issues start when I do anything intensive i.e music-making. I've been careful to make sure that the DAW is the only thing running, but keeping a DAW running under 50 degrees is extremely difficult.


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

Google says you can go to 70C max for an SSD or nvme, but you probably want to keep it cooler than that. I was actually running a box fan by my music computers (not recording audio) just to suck the hot air out - they are under the desk and don't get as good circulation as they should. It lowered the temperature a lot. My room got warm though.


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

dzilizzi said:


> Google says you can go to 70C max for an SSD or nvme, but you probably want to keep it cooler than that. I was actually running a box fan by my music computers (not recording audio) just to suck the hot air out - they are under the desk and don't get as good circulation as they should. It lowered the temperature a lot. My room got warm though.


Thanks, but I think I should've been clearer. It's not the ssd that is running at those temperatures, but the CPU. What I want to ascertain is whether a computer crash can damage the ssd's (data, physical...or both).


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## Technostica (Feb 18, 2021)

Data centre SSDs have a power loss feature to mitigate against loss of data due to power outage etc.
So there is the possibility of data loss if there is data in flight at the point of a failure.
In this case there seemingly isn’t a power loss so not sure if there is a risk of data loss.
The data centre SSDs have a way of providing enough power so that the drive can complete all pending writes. They use capacitors or batteries, I think!

I’d use this software to check your drive for starters, Windows only;





CrystalDiskInfo


About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64 IE 8.0~...



crystalmark.info


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## d.healey (Feb 18, 2021)

Did you clean the fan and grill?


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

Technostica said:


> Data centre SSDs have a power loss feature to mitigate against loss of data due to power outage etc.
> So there is the possibility of data loss if there is data in flight at the point of a failure.
> In this case there seemingly isn’t a power loss so not sure if there is a risk of data loss.
> The data centre SSDs have a way of providing enough power so that the drive can complete all pending writes. They use capacitors or batteries, I think!
> ...


Thanks!

I just have a standard ssd, so don't think I have any of that extra safety buffer. Isn't there always some kind of data being read or written, even when the computer is idle? S.M.A.R.T disk status is no longer supported for Mac, but I have yet to see any issues.


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

d.healey said:


> Did you clean the fan and grill?


I have been, although perhaps a little slack lately. I keep meaning to buy one of those camera lens cleaning puffer brushes.


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## Technostica (Feb 18, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Thanks!
> 
> I just have a standard ssd, so don't think I have any of that extra safety buffer. Isn't there always some kind of data being read or written, even when the computer is idle? S.M.A.R.T disk status is no longer supported for Mac, but I have yet to see any issues.


I think it’s only an issue if critical data that needs to be written is lost.


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

I have to say, my external SSD's sometimes get pretty warm on the top of my computer. So far, no problems with loss other than one that just died (cheap non-name brand) I was able to use a recovery software on it to verify I had backups of everything on it before it totally died. When my computers have crashed for reasons other than hard drive failure, the drives have generally been fine. I think, unless the computer gets so hot that it melts stuff inside, you should be fine. if it is an nvme, you can buy a thermal shield to keep it cooler.


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

Technostica said:


> I think it’s only an issue if critical data that needs to be written is lost.


But that's what I'm saying. If the system is always reading and writing little packages to keep the OS afloat, then a loss could theoretically corrupt the install?


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

dzilizzi said:


> I have to say, my external SSD's sometimes get pretty warm on the top of my computer. So far, no problems with loss other than one that just died (cheap non-name brand) I was able to use a recovery software on it to verify I had backups of everything on it before it totally died. When my computers have crashed for reasons other than hard drive failure, the drives have generally been fine. I think, unless the computer gets so hot that it melts stuff inside, you should be fine. if it is an nvme, you can buy a thermal shield to keep it cooler.


Losing drives is a tough one. I've had a few mechanical losses in my time, but my ssd's currently seem to be doing well. in terms of temperatures, not sure they could get much cooler. Interestingly, I'm currently idling at 31 degrees, and that is with 'mail' and Brave (6 tabs) open. Seems perhaps that something abnormal was happening earlier (perhaps one of the webpages having an issue)


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## Technostica (Feb 18, 2021)

el-bo said:


> But that's what I'm saying. If the system is always reading and writing little packages to keep the OS afloat, then a loss could theoretically corrupt the install?


I doubt that most writes are critical for the OS. 
More likely to lose application data.


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

Technostica said:


> I doubt that most writes are critical for the OS.
> More likely to lose application data.


Cheers! Seems to have settled down in the last couple of hours. Will keep a closer eye on things


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## dzilizzi (Feb 18, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Cheers! Seems to have settled down in the last couple of hours. Will keep a closer eye on things


Good luck!


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## el-bo (Feb 18, 2021)

dzilizzi said:


> Good luck!


Thanks!


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## Publius (Feb 18, 2021)

If your laptop is crashing a lot, I don't think the ssd is the first suspect, but one threshold question: Is it a quality ssd or a cheap one? My samsungs have done pretty well over the yeas. If you upgraded to a good ssd, if the laptop failed, you still have a good ssd for something else--but that would be my last suspect given the symptoms.

This sounds like maybe the motherboard. One thing I would try is to blow the dust off the cpu fan if it has dust clogging it. Its important to not let the fan spin when you blow air on it, lest it spin too fast and break--which happened to me once. That sort of thing is best done with the back off so all dust in the guts can be blown out. That is the only fixable thing that can happen over a period of years that could cause problems--my experience anyway...

SSDs have a mechanism where they slow themselves down if they get too hot.

I believe the ssd will draw less power than a spinning platter, so less heat for the inside of the laptop overall.

Having said all that, with laptops if there is a mobo problem, may well be time for a new one or newer one.


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## el-bo (Feb 19, 2021)

Publius said:


> If your laptop is crashing a lot, I don't think the ssd is the first suspect, but one threshold question: Is it a quality ssd or a cheap one? My samsungs have done pretty well over the yeas. If you upgraded to a good ssd, if the laptop failed, you still have a good ssd for something else--but that would be my last suspect given the symptoms.


Thanks! This really isn't an ssd issue. I followed many different possibilities over the last year, and I finally found the stability or crashing was dependent on temperature. The cutoff point has remained pretty solidly around the 70 degree mark. Hitting that temperature would force everything to freeze up for about ten seconds (Any playing sound would then glitch and playback at 1-second intervals), before the laptop forced itself to either completely shutdown, or more recently restart.
The difference, yesterday was that the temperature threshold lowered to around 50 degrees)

I have two ssds. Both are made by Crucial. The system ssd was replaced this year as part of my initial attempts to find the fault. The ssd that used to be the system drive has now become the second internal drive. It's five years old, but still seems to work as new.

Since finding the temperature threshold point, I have managed to go for weeks at a time without a single crash. Before that, I was experiencing multiple crashes a day. Now I only get crashes if I get a bit slack e.g trying to run heavier DAW projects, while leaving other applications open.



Publius said:


> This sounds like maybe the motherboard. One thing I would try is to blow the dust off the cpu fan if it has dust clogging it. Its important to not let the fan spin when you blow air on it, lest it spin too fast and break--which happened to me once. That sort of thing is best done with the back off so all dust in the guts can be blown out. That is the only fixable thing that can happen over a period of years that could cause problems--my experience anyway...


Pretty sure it's the CPU. Maybe the gfx. I did actually blow the dust yesterday, as I hadn't for a little while. And it's now back to 'normal' performance. I think that something had dropped or flown/crawled into the vents. All good now!

Thanks for the tip about not blowing while the fans are moving. I always do that. Perhaps it's because I always have the fans running at 6200rpm (another precautionary measure) that I've not forced it out of it's current range 



Publius said:


> SSDs have a mechanism where they slow themselves down if they get too hot.
> 
> I believe the ssd will draw less power than a spinning platter, so less heat for the inside of the laptop overall.


Not sure what optimal/maximum running temps are for ssd's, but mine seem to be running at 18 and 20 degrees, even when the system total reports 31 degrees. I'd imagine being completely exposed helps them maintain really low temperatures 



Publius said:


> Having said all that, with laptops if there is a mobo problem, may well be time for a new one or newer one.


The laptop is only a few months away from it's ninth birthday. And actually, yesterday's incident aside, it still does everything I need (albeit with the use of occasional bouncing and freezing). Not really in a position to buy another computer, but even it I was I am determined to use this one until it no longer functions at all. If it can just last long enough for the current run of M1 products is replaced, so I can pick up a second-hand unit from this current line-up, I'll be very happy.

Thanks, again


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## Technostica (Feb 19, 2021)

SSDs can run pretty hot without throttling themselves.
It will vary but maybe 70 to 80C.
2.5" SATA SSDs should rarely if ever get hot enough to have issues, especially if the capacity isn't that large.
The ones to look out for are the M.2 PCIe drives that were cutting edge at the time of release.
The later generations tend to be better in terms of overall efficiency.
Best to read reviews if using a constrained system or running demanding workloads.

A heatsink is a good addition to an expensive SSD that you plan on keeping for ages.
My SSD idle temps:

Toshiba X3 256GB M.2 PCIe 60C.
Pioneer 2TB M.2 PCIe 27C.
Micron 5210 2.5" SATA 29C.

The Pioneer has a large heatsink and even after an extended heavy load I've never seen it above mid 50s.


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## el-bo (Feb 19, 2021)

Technostica said:


> SSDs can run pretty hot without throttling themselves.
> It will vary but maybe 70 to 80C.
> 2.5" SATA SSDs should rarely if ever get hot enough to have issues, especially if the capacity isn't that large.
> The ones to look out for are the M.2 PCIe drives that were cutting edge at the time of release.
> ...


The two drives I have are SATA. One idles at 18 degrees, with the other at 20. Playing back music from iTunes and logic at the same time only increases the heat by 5 degrees. At some point I'll try a logic project with more random accessing, and see. However, i doubt I'll see anything to worry about.

As for a heatsink? There's nothing to sink the heat to


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## MartinH. (Feb 19, 2021)

el-bo said:


> I've been having problems with my laptop for about a year now. I've tried so many things in an effort to work out what's going on. In the end, I pretty much found that it would crash as soon as it hit 70 degrees C. I've changed the thermal paste on a couple of occasions, in a bid to keep temperatures as cool as possible, and now even use the laptop with the back removed. Anyway, now the computer seems to crash at 50 degrees. I've had about six crashes today, and all I've been doing is surfing the net.
> 
> Apart from the inconvenience of having to reboot the system, Im really worried about the ssd's (I have two installed). Of course, this would be a real issue with mechanical drives, but is there ever going to be an issue with solid state?
> 
> Cheers



I'm not 100% convinced your cooling setup is actually helping you. The laptop was originally designed to be operated with the screen up, the back closed, and position normally on a hard surface. Now if I interpret the photo of your setup from the other thread correctly, you're operating it with the back open, upside down, and the screen closed? 

I used to have a PC that would crash from insufficient cooling on the south- or northbridge (can't remember which one). That can look like a CPU cooling issue and correlate with CPU temp, but I couldn't fix it with a better CPU cooler. I had to point an additional fan at the component. The board was designed so that a normal stock CPU cooler would have cooled the chipset sufficiently, but the fat high end cooler that I put on the CPU moved the air in a very different way that didn't cool the chipset at all. 

A different issue I once had (same PC iirc) was that the case had some opening to let hot air out. However this lead to a suboptimal _airflow_, and I got much better cooling results after just taping some of those case opening shut, so that the air had to pass over more passively cooled components. 

SSDs can produce quite a bit of heat afaik. Maybe it would be an option to connect extension cables for power and SATA connectors to your SSDs, so that they can produce their heat far enough away from the temperature sensitive components in your computer? Originally the computer wasn't designed with SSDs in mind I assume?

Having the screen closed can lead to worse cooling too, I remember that being a problem on my very old macbook pro. I would suggest to experiment with reverting to a setup that is closer to the original design for airflow, and then augment with an external cooling pad.


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## MartinH. (Feb 19, 2021)

el-bo said:


> The two drives I have are SATA. One idles at 18 degrees, with the other at 20. Playing back music from iTunes and logic at the same time only increases the heat by 5 degrees. At some point I'll try a logic project with more random accessing, and see. However, i doubt I'll see anything to worry about.
> 
> As for a heatsink? There's nothing to sink the heat to



Is that an aluminum case? When you operate it with screen open and back shut, can you feel places that are considerably warmer than others? If that's the case, you might get some benefit from putting adhesive passive coolers onto those places of the case. If this is a Mac, the thermal design probably was bad to begin with *), and the aluminum case may have been intended to be part of the cooling solution. 


*) the model that I had was getting so hot, the solder connections around the GPU could melt, and at some places the case would get so hot I couldn't touch it anymore.


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## el-bo (Feb 19, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> I'm not 100% convinced your cooling setup is actually helping you. The laptop was originally designed to be operated with the screen up, the back closed, and position normally on a hard surface. Now if I interpret the photo of your setup from the other thread correctly, you're operating it with the back open, upside down, and the screen closed?
> 
> I used to have a PC that would crash from insufficient cooling on the south- or northbridge (can't remember which one). That can look like a CPU cooling issue and correlate with CPU temp, but I couldn't fix it with a better CPU cooler. I had to point an additional fan at the component. The board was designed so that a normal stock CPU cooler would have cooled the chipset sufficiently, but the fat high end cooler that I put on the CPU moved the air in a very different way that didn't cool the chipset at all.
> 
> ...


Thanks!

The laptop lid isn't closed. Here's a pic I just took, with the laptop rotated. That's a piece of polystyrene:







So the lid is open, the back is off and the fans are pushing out heat from the CPU and GPU, residing between the Logic board and the QWERTY. While I am no doubt losing some of that fan power due to it not being a closed system, running the fans at top speed I can actually feel the heat being ejected where I am sitting.

I currently have 3 apps open, with 6 tabs in 'Brave'. My temps are at 32 degrees, and I can drop to 28 with all apps shut. These are the best temperatures I've ever seen on this laptop.
In comparison to when I used my laptop as intended, I have gained 8-9 degrees, with 6-7 of those from removing the lid. I also gained an extra advantage by re-applying thermal paste. The first product I used didn't really last very long, but the Grizzly paste I currently have got me another few degrees and seems very stable.

As for the laptop being designed to run open, flat and on a hard surface? Not so sure about that. My last laptop showed no difference in temperatures when running in clamshell mode (I'd guess that any higher temperatures were offset by the screen not generating any heat). And actually these laptops (not sure about other manufacturers) avoid aggressive case heat dissipation, to make sure that people aren't burning their laps or setting fire to their duvets  There are a ton of folk who are modding their laptops by applying thermal padding to bridge the space between the components and the aluminium case. And I was initially trying to go down that route. and in trying to find the appropriate pad thickness for my laptop, I came across a post from someone who had great success removing the back panel. So I tried it. it worked and I haven't looked back 

The ssd heat doesn't seem to be an issue for me. I am not encoding video. my DAW projects are not normally very resource heavy, and I no longer game on the Mac (I actually bought the xbox because I figured it'd be cheaper than replacing a laptop).

It's definitely unconventional, but it works. For much of this year I've been plagued by these daily crashes that removed the small amount of motivation I had to make music. Aside from yesterdays glitch in the program, this current Frankenstein's monster of a setup has given me crash-free computing for weeks on end. In it's 9th year, this laptop is experiencing it's best thermals ever. Just gotta keep away from that 70 degree limit.


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## el-bo (Feb 19, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Is that an aluminum case? When you operate it with screen open and back shut, can you feel places that are considerably warmer than others? If that's the case, you might get some benefit from putting adhesive passive coolers onto those places of the case. If this is a Mac, the thermal design probably was bad to begin with *), and the aluminum case may have been intended to be part of the cooling solution.
> 
> 
> *) the model that I had was getting so hot, the solder connections around the GPU could melt, and at some places the case would get so hot I couldn't touch it anymore.


Actually, that might be a good idea. If I can find some places to bridge between the internals and the keyboard, I might get better thermals under load

The only problem is I think I lose years of my life every time I remove the logic board


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## MartinH. (Feb 19, 2021)

el-bo said:


> I currently have 3 apps open, with 6 tabs in 'Brave'. My temps are at 32 degrees, and I can drop to 28 with all apps shut. These are the best temperatures I've ever seen on this laptop.
> In comparison to when I used my laptop as intended, I have gained 8-9 degrees, with 6-7 of those from removing the lid. I also gained an extra advantage by re-applying thermal paste. The first product I used didn't really last very long, but the Grizzly paste I currently have got me another few degrees and seems very stable.



The thing is, are you 100% sure the CPU temp even matters directly? If you are getting lesss crashes you must have done something right obviously, but be aware of the correlation vs causation problem. You can only measure a certain set of temps, but do you know for a fact that these are actually causing the problem and not some other component that doesn't have a temp sensor? If opening the case redirects airflow in a way that air doesn't get forced past a hot component before it gets to the CPU, then the result would likely be that the CPU temp gets lower, and the other component's temp gets higher (which you might not notice if it doesn't have a temp sensor). I don't know the thermal specs of your CPU, but 70 °C shouldn't be anywhere close to crash inducing for a CPU imho. Things you do to lower CPU temp may or may not also affect temp of components that may be the cause for the crashes (in case it's not the cpu), not always guarantueed in a positive way though in my experience. Keep an eye on the crash frequency as a measure of success instead of the CPU temp is what I would recommend. 

And keep in mind that some issues may actually be of mechanical nature. Heat can lead to slight deformations that may cause problems at certain temperatures. Ages ago I interned at a PC store and a client had a faulty drive that never could finish a full backup. The boss guessed it might be thermal deformation related and we started spraying the drive with liquid CO2 while running the backup and it actually finished fine then.


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## el-bo (Feb 20, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> The thing is, are you 100% sure the CPU temp even matters directly? If you are getting lesss crashes you must have done something right obviously, but be aware of the correlation vs causation problem. You can only measure a certain set of temps, but do you know for a fact that these are actually causing the problem and not some other component that doesn't have a temp sensor?


I'm really not sure about anything, except that at the point of crashing the temperatures are hovering in the high 60's (hey don't drop much in the few seconds it takes to restart). Since the start of having these issues I've tried tons of different things. At the start of the issues (last Feb), and on the advice of a handful of KVR members, I avoided using the discrete gfx, defaulting to the on-board Intel gfx. I know certain Macbooks suffered form gfx card issues, so that seemed like a possible cause. The computer still crashed, albeit less frequently. I've since gone back to using the NVIDIA gfx, attached to my external monitor. Seems to work fine, but it could still be a fault of the gfx card.



MartinH. said:


> If opening the case redirects airflow in a way that air doesn't get forced past a hot component before it gets to the CPU, then the result would likely be that the CPU temp gets lower, and the other component's temp gets higher (which you might not notice if it doesn't have a temp sensor). I don't know the thermal specs of your CPU, but 70 °C shouldn't be anywhere close to crash inducing for a CPU imho.


As I acknowledged in an earlier post, there is definitely going to be some amount of loss of flow power now it's no longer a sealed unit. But I'm not sure which components would suddenly be deprived of airflow. The CPU and GPU are both cooled within the same pipe system, and that is definitely working. All the rest of the hotter components (The ones that others' advise to 'sink') are now completely exposed, and cool to the touch. I'll have to remember to touch them when the machine is under stress.

And no, 70 degrees is not right for this processor. I used to be able to reach much higher; certainly higher than I could ever get in the DAW without other bottlenecks reigning everything in.



MartinH. said:


> Things you do to lower CPU temp may or may not also affect temp of components that may be the cause for the crashes (in case it's not the cpu), not always guarantueed in a positive way though in my experience. Keep an eye on the crash frequency as a measure of success instead of the CPU temp is what I would recommend.


All cooling attempts, apart from just trying not to do anything that puts any load on the computer, have been in the last few months. In fact, it wasn't before the end of September that it even dawned on me to check the thermal-paste situation. And coincidentally, I'd started to notice that the battery was starting to bulge. Changed the battery but that made no difference to the crashing. But changing the paste made (initially, at least) a huge difference in running temperatures. Ended up changing the paste for greater gains and more stability under-load. And when I finally took the base-plate off (last couple of months) I finally had enough temperature headroom and stability that I could start making music again.

So, all the problems already existed beforehand. But it was good thermal paste and an unconventional approach to cooling that rescued my laptop from being nothing more than an internet machine and media player 

As for measure of success? I'd say that going from multiple daily crashes to perhaps one crah per month is pretty successful. 


MartinH. said:


> And keep in mind that some issues may actually be of mechanical nature. Heat can lead to slight deformations that may cause problems at certain temperatures. Ages ago I interned at a PC store and a client had a faulty drive that never could finish a full backup. The boss guessed it might be thermal deformation related and we started spraying the drive with liquid CO2 while running the backup and it actually finished fine then.


Kinda like whipping a horse? Interesting 

Again, you could be right pointing to all the other possibilities. However, at this moment, I am done chasing my tail. I've replaced an ssd, a battery and thermal paste. I've cleaned everything multiple times. I've been lied to by repair techs, and been told that even if Apple or 3rd-party licensed dealers were allowed to touch computers over five-years-old (They aren't, by the way), the likelihood is that I'd be told that the logic-board needed replacing. That technically makes it a write-off, as such a repair would be more expensive than buying a similarly-specced computer on the 2nd-hand market.

So I'm destined to help this poor gal through her twilight days?...months?...years? Keeping her well-fed and hydrated and helping her to keep as cool as possible.


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## el-bo (Feb 20, 2021)

Also, just to clarify. i can see how it might not make sense to blame the CPU. Not even sure I would. it's just the only measurement that seems to be consistent regarding failure and keeping within those ranges seems to keep me relatively crash-free.


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