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General discussion

Magnetic fields and laptops

Jan 5, 2005 7:37AM PST

Pavilion zt3010us, 13 months old, second VGA card..
I've been doing some reading lately about what hazards to keep your notebook away from and there are several. One in particular is the "magnetic field".
Now the articles don't say how strong a field could be harmful over a period of time but I wonder about the magnetic field being produced by a laptop cooling pad with 4 fans.
I recently (like yesterday) lost my VGA card (2nd in a year) for no apparent reason....again,
Anyone else have a cool pad under their laptop?

Discussion is locked

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Are you a gamer pushing the video card hard?
Jan 5, 2005 8:52AM PST

Ouch, you have lost 2 ATI 9200 video cards on a HPZT300 series, eh? Make sure you go to X1000forums.com (site for HPZT3000, Compaq X1000, and HPnx7000 business)to post this and do a search for this topic already.

Ken here from Ifixit has posted he has done some repairs for video cards and there are some people who have had to replace them at X1000forums.com but I was not aware of 2 in 13 months.

I do not use my Compaq X1000 heavily and I don't play games on it (I mostly use it for wi-fi internet access) so I probably don't strain the video card enough to do this.

If you are using a coolpad perhaps you are an gamer and are pushing the video card as the fan does not run much at all on this model unless you are using the hard drive or optical drives heavily.

I use a Targus Podium Coolpad (29.99 retail -- sometimes a rebate -- see Targus.com) to elevate the rear and give a nice tilt to the keyboard. However, this does not draw any power like the USB coolpads with fans you are referring to.

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Might just be pushing it to much......
Jan 5, 2005 8:21PM PST

Ken, as a matter of fact I can honestly say that the first VGA card failure was due in part to video gaming (at least that's what I think).

I had been playing a graphic and motion intense game prior to the card failing. After the warranty repair I decided that I wouldn't be making that mistake again.

This time around, I had been viewing music videos on Yahoo Launch prior to it failing.....again a lot of video motion but I didn't really give a thought to frying the card doing that. I guess I was wrong.

When I get it back from the shop I will be extra careful with what I run thru the VGA card and see if I can make it last a bit longer.

I bought the cool pad mainly because the laptop got a bit warm under normal use and I didn't feel as if there was adequate space under the computer to allow sufficient cooling.

Thanks for replying and I'll be sure to check out the forums you suggested.

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9200 Warping?
Jan 5, 2005 10:19PM PST

Many people on X1000forums had the problem where their video cards would conk out and they could press the keyboard at the 6-7 keys and could pop it back into place and work again. I almost bought a couple computers like that on eBay to fix them.

One theory was that heat was causing the circuit board of the video card to warp and pull away from the mainboard. If you were playing hot-and-heavy games a lot, it might've caused your video card to warp and pull away both times. The video card is on top of the mainboard, so the coolpad does little to help that. In fact, other than helping the cpu and the ventilation, it wouldn't really help your video card or hard drive.

See, this why I'm glad i have my thicker Dell 8600. Happy

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Video card
Jan 6, 2005 3:53AM PST

Yes, you will find information about the video card issue in some cases on X1000forums.com so post a question there - if you in fact have a bad connection in the area the video card attaches to the LCD you may be ok.

You are over the year mark and there were some people who had a video card failure after this time and if you were playing a game for a long period of time that could have caused it.

But the 2nd failure is questionable especially since you have had it such a short time

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Video cards and x1000
Jan 6, 2005 6:13PM PST

This model Does have issues with the video card Ken S. is correct.. (Weve been getting quite a few).. The cards seem to partially unplug from the system board due to hinges being too tight and the slight flexing of the system board. This can cause issues from Killing a stick of RAM or the video card itself, No Boot, to Intermittent video flashing and dropping out. Were also noticing solder joint issues on the same models. This forum is an excellent place to find answers to questions regarding Different models and problems.
Ken LaDere
www.ikenfixit.com

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Compaq X1000/HPZT3000/HPnx7000 are same model
Jan 7, 2005 2:46AM PST

The above post applies to all three sister models posted on the subject line -- full posts on repair issues, modifications, pricing, specifications, etc are at X1000forums.com (over 10,000 registered users).

Note that these models have been out since about July of 2003 in one form or another (bus speed and RAM speed updated, etc with 2nd Centrino revision) so some of the posts about issues early on have been corrected in later models .....(especially by bios updates).

But this ATI 9200 video card issue is a hardware issue.

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Warping
Feb 15, 2005 8:10PM PST

Ken S. is right as there is definitly an issue here with warping. Its as though the heat causes the video cards to warp down, This is making for bad connections on the integrated chip as well. I built a lower cage assy to help cool and restrict warping and it seems to help quite a bit on these.. Basically sandwiches the card between 2 plates instead of the factory top plate located above it as manned. Theres not much room for this but it did work! Think Compaq/HP would like a copy of this lower plate assy? Please advise.