Laptop Overheats While Gaming

My old laptop always have overheating issues when running Granado Espada game client. It will get really hot and then the operating system just crashes, and the laptop has to be restarted. Here are some methods to reduce heat. Changing settings may introduce some lag, but it is still better to lag than to have a entire system crash.

A. Reduce Processor State
I have found this to be very effective in preventing overheating. You may need to lower the number further if it still overheats at 95%. See How To Prevent Your Laptop From Overheating [Windows 7] as well.

1. Go to Control Panel > Display > Adjust Brightness window.
2. Click Change Plan Setting for the currently selected power plan.
3. Click Change Advanced Power Settings to open Power Options window. 
4. Reduce Maximum Processor State from 100% to a lower number (e.g. 95%, 80%, 50%).
5. Reduce Minimum Processor State to a lower number accordingly.
6. Click OK to apply the changes.

B. Change GPU Settings
Change the following GPU Settings. The exact steps to be taken depends on your GPU. See How to Change Vertical Sync .

• VSync = On or Adaptive
• Triple Buffering = On

If there is input lag, you can also reduce Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames to 2 or 1.


C. Use Process Throttle
Once I started reducing processor state, I have not used a process throttle so far. But if you wish, you can limit a particular process by using a throttle such as Battle Encoder Shirase (BES) freeware.

1. Run BES first, then start Granado Espada patcher.
2. Once patching is done, start the game client itself.
3. Click Target button in BES, and select ge.exe. Note: This must be C:\Program Files\Granado Espada\release\ge.exe, and not C:\Program Files\Granado Espada\ge.exe.
4. Click Limit This button (for one-time limit) or Limit/Watch button (for constant monitoring).
5. Click on Control button in BES to specify the exact limit.

Note: Using a process throttle may make the game music/sounds distorted.






D. Cooling Device
Having a small table-top fan blowing on the laptop helps to cool it down as well. Personally, I find a fan to be more effective than a laptop cooling pad. Be sure to clean the fan if it accumulates too much dust.



E. Clean Hardware
You can also clean the laptop internal parts (fan, heat sink, etc.) and apply a new coating of thermal paste. This however requires laptop disassembly, which you probably shouldn't do if you are not sure what you are doing.