Dell E6400 hot on right side rest pad is this normal?

Just last week I got nice E6400. Since the first day of possession I observing that right side rest pad (on DVD drive side) getting quite hot, where you start feeling good amount of heat while typing.

Is this normal?

 

It happens to me sometimes too. The WiFi card (and potentially another mini PCIE card, if you have one) is down there, and the wifi card can heat up significantly if you're using it.

 

yup..... that's normal..... mine too does heat up once inawhile, considering i have the integrated card (P8600, wd250gb7200rpm)

 

I have had my E6400 for a year now and I recently had an issue dealing with severe CPU throttling. Before this issue occurred I noticed an increase in the temperature (and fan noise) of my laptop including the entire front. Dell replaced the motherboard, CPU, and fan under warranty and the laptop is working great. My recommendation is that this is probably a normal amount of heat (keep those vents clear) but to be on the safe side check to ensure that the CPU is running normally using the Resource Monitor in Win7 or Vista or CPUz in anything else. The CPU throttling resulted in a constant 794MHz no matter the load.

Intel P8600 2.4GHz
Nvidia 160M

-Side note: the laptop came back with A17BIOS instead of A20, not sure if it is making a difference but I am leaving it.