Satellite L855-10P - Sudden shutdown playing 3D games

Question

Hello,
When trying to play 3D games, after more or less time playing, often less than 10 minutes, my Satellite will suddenly shutdown. Afterwards, it can't be booted up again before some time.
This sort of symptom is generally due to overheat, a common problem with Satellite laptop (and by the way, this is probably the last Toshiba I buy since they can't seem to get that fixed).
The usual solution is to remove dust from inside the laptop, for example with a gentle vacuum cleaner.
It is impossible to do correctly without opening (and voiding the warranty) since they didn't put an access to the fan and heatsink, put can help once in a while.
On this model however, the exhaust is block by a grid (part of the heat sink I suppose, which makes sense) and on the intake, the fan is blocked so that it can't turn in the opposite direction, meaning it is almost impossible to s*ck the dust. Result: almost impossible to remove dust. Well played.
So normally I would send my laptop back for "repair" (which is just opening the thing to remove the dust and maybe redo the thermal paste, but you can't do that yourself of course), but in this case I noticed it shutdown really quick.
I can leave it on a 2D game or old low quality 3D games (say Supreme Commander in low quality mode) for hours without problem, even in hot weather, but as soon as I try a newer game (for example Resident Evil 6, even in low quality) it shutdown pretty fast and without feeling so hot.
So I am wondering if maybe this time it would be a problem with the graphic card/driver. Let's say something like a command than crash the graphic card.
I have a AMD Radeon HD 7670M with the driver version 8.932.5.3000 (the only one available for this computer and Windows 7 64 bits on the Toshiba website).
Is there a know issue that could cause the graphic card to crash or overheat more than expected with this model?
(If you wonder why I didn't wrote s*ck in full letter, it is because the profanity filter on this forum don't think it is a word that can be used in normal conversation.)

Answer 1

>When trying to play 3D games, after more or less time playing, often less than 10 minutes, my Satellite will suddenly shutdown. Afterwards, it can't be booted up again before some time.
To me it sounds like a GPU has operated at full capacity and produced lot of warmness leading to high internal temperature.
In my eyes the unit shut down due to the high temperature.
The notebook supports a kind of hardware protection. The unit will shut down automatically to prevent the hardware from damage.
Dust and debris might be one of the reasons why the parts cannot be cooled down properly.
>This sort of symptom is generally due to overheat, a common problem with Satellite laptop
This sort of symptom happens to all notebooks worldwide because of air circulation.
>I can leave it on a 2D game or old low quality 3D games (say Supreme Commander in low quality mode) for hours without problem, even in hot weather, but as soon as I try a newer game (for example Resident Evil 6, even in low quality) it shutdown pretty fast and without feeling so hot
Running games on low quality does not stress the GPU a lot and this lead to low heat dissipation and low temperature.
>Is there a know issue that could cause the graphic card to crash or overheat more than expected with this model?
I dont think so mostly such issues can be resolved by changing the settings within the windows power options (decreasing the CPU/GPU performance, change of cooling method) and of course within the game settings (low details, etc)