a few days before sending my laptop off to repair I've noticed an additional, unrelated problem: it would start heating up to the point where I was unable to play a game (Apex Legends) anymore after 30 minutes or so (which I used to be able to do for [too many] hours at a time not long before), because of absolutely HORRIBLE stuttering and freezes. I’ve had a tiny bit of suspicion about what could be the cause…
1/20
to start it off, the main issue that warranted the RMA was that the E key stopped working. it turns out that it’s super annoying when you have to copy a letter and th^Vn k^V^Vp pasting it inst^Vad of just typing it th^V r^Vgular way. and it double sucks when it’s in some passwords of yours. and triple sucks when your language uses diacritics like Ę which is typed by the alt+E combo, because you can’t just alt+ctrl+V it.
2/20
I thought maybe some crumbs got under the key and made it not contact properly with whatever the keys are supposed to contact with (I’m not a hardware guy. or a software guy. I’m mostly just a guy). a can of compressed air didn’t help, but doing the RMA only to find out that it was just some dirt would be stupid, wouldn’t it? so I decided to try my questionable "best" and see if I can get inside. I’ve swapped the SDD and RAM in it before, so I already knew how to start opening it up.
3/20
there are no disassembly guides for this laptop model to be found online. no Youtube videos, no iFixit, nothing. everything I’ve found only touches on what I’ve already done, i.e. RAM and SDD. still, I (Not A Hardware Guy) pressed on. I took a photo of the main board to know what goes where for when I start putting everything back together. I busted out jars and jar lids to keep track of the little screws. I wrote notes about what I was unplugging in what order.
4/20
I navigated through the hellish spaghetti of cables and wires and weird-ass plugs that I (NAHG) didn’t know what to do with. soon though, my progress started slowing down. it seemed that in order to get to the keyboard, I had to take out the entire motherboard, and in order to do THAT, I had to remove two fans and a big-ass heatsink that was stuck to the board in several spots with what I assume (NAHG) was thermal paste thingy of sorts.
5/20
I could see some more screws being partially covered by the heatsink, so couldn’t proceed further without doing something about it. I managed to shimmy it out a little bit and got it unstuck, but one of the strips of thermal play-doh got messed up in the process. uh oh.
my attempts ended up futile, because it turned out that one of the fans had a plug that required unplugging and I just couldn’t figure it out (NAHG) for the fear of completely breaking it. I started retracing my steps.
6/20
I put the little bits of the messed up thermogunk back as well as I could, and reassembled the rest of the laptop back, surprisingly with no extra screws at the end. later that day I went ahead and played some Apex matches, and that’s when I noticed the overheating. UH OH.
a quick investigation revealed that the SSD, a cheapo 1 TB Lexar that I got on sale like six months or so ago, was the victim, reaching temperatures 10-20°C higher than usual.
7/20
the SSD started giving up surprisingly early, although it’s been frustrating me with its occasional slowness so many times that it wouldn’t be THAT surprising.
still, more likely, the thermo play-doh played-oh a crucial role in displacing heat away from the SSD, even though the affected spot was nowhere near the SSD, but what do I (NAHG) know?
8/20
I eventually packed the laptop for its RMA journey, hoping that the actual HGs in the service center, while embarking on the same journey I have in order to get to the E key, somehow wouldn’t notice that the heat displacing plasticine had been displaced before by unauthorized, warranty-voiding personnel. I even threw in a little something to perhaps help them not notice: https://masto.ai/@noodlejetski/110662540651376192
(jk, I would’ve added it even if I didn't have any hidden motives)
9/20
it took them over 3 weeks to send it back. dealing both with them and with UPS was an exercise in frustration that could probably make for another thread of similar length.
when I opened it up again in order to swap my SSD and RAM sticks upgrades back, I’ve noticed that the cold-providing clay in that one particular spot hasn’t been touched and looked the same way as before. bummer, but let’s not despair.
I booted it up and installed a month’s worth of updates to an Arch-based distro.
10/20
later on, I played for 6 hours straight (shut up, I’m on vacation) with no sign of stuttering or overheating, and SSD temperatures were back to normal! maybe during my amateur rocket surgery I just didn’t make all the heat pipes stick to the other parts as snugly as they’re supposed to? doesn’t really matter how, they’ve fixed it!
...
except that I've figured out today that while it’s indeed resolved, the problem was completely different and the past six or so toots were a red herring.
11/20
if you’re familiar with Linux in any way whatsoever, you most likely know what WINE is. and if you’re doing any kind of gaming on Linux, you’re probably aware of Proton, a customized version of WINE developed by Steam, made specifically to make Windows games work better on Linux.
and then there’s ProtonGE, an even further customized version of Proton developed by GloriousEggroll, who adds some stuff that Valve hasn’t or can’t add (e.g. for licensing reasons) that improves the experience.
12/20
one of ProtonGE's unique features was an implementation of FSR for all titles. FSR renders a game at lower resolution, then upscales it to screen’s native resolution and sharpens it. the video quality is better than straight up using lower resolution, while the performance can be way better than playing at native resolution. for a laptop gamer like me, it can be a godsend.
however, Proton had a major version upgrade recently, and GE announced that FSR isn’t compatible with it anymore.
13/20
I’ve started looking into workarounds, and it turns out that you can achieve similar upscaling by installing gamescope, a micro-compositor that micro-compositors on Valve’s Steam Deck for reasons (NASG), and adding some launch parameters. it can be quite fussy on desktops though, and sometimes it will launch a game properly, and other times it will refuse to do so – even when you simply close the game and try running again, without changing any settings – at least on my setup.
14/20
trying to find a solution online, I'd added a launch parameter that enabled Proton logging to see if any error pops up and catches my (NASG) eye, but my lack of expertise combined with the easiness of being distracted has led me to nowhere.
one day when I was still waiting for RMA return, I saw an announcement that a new version of ProtonGE being released, and that FSR was back! a volunteer contributed some patches and made it compatible again. all hail open source!
15/20
once I've applied all the updates on the freshly returned laptop, I opened Steam, deleted all previously used launch parameters and added back the ones that I used to use for FSR before they removed it, and went on the 6 hour binge of rapidly and repeatedly dying to teenagers.
and today, a week later, I finally put 2 and 2 together because I stumbled upon something in my /home directory.
it was a .log file created on July 2nd.
a rather vast .log file.
16/20
remember how 2 toots ago I mentioned enabling logging when launching a game, and how I can be easily distracted?
...see how I never said anything about disabling the logging once I gave up? and how I only mentioned removing launch parameters AFTER getting the laptop back?
well it turns out that when you make software like Proton write a log of everything that happens to it, it has lots of things to log, which makes the hard drive Not Happy™ and in turn your game’s performance WILL suffer.
17/20
it’s crazy how I “fixed” the problem by accident. if the guy who added those new patches to ProtonGE hadn’t succeeded with them, I have no idea how long would it take for me to notice that I had logging enabled all this time, as I probably wouldn’t try changing the launch parameters for dog knows how long. and I was already considering splurging for another SSD to see if it would change anything. I guess it would, since I’d be setting up everything, including Steam, from scratch.
19/20
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